Decision making by agent committee

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 56).Computer decision making systems are aids that are becoming used in an increasing number and variety of applications. These systems allow people to interface with sources of information far too large and complicated to process themselves. As these systems become used on more advanced and complicated tasks, they will need to become more intelligent. One step towards this is the creation of a multi-agent decision making system that uses behavior inspired by the interactions of groups of people to allow a set of agents with humanistic characteristics to interact with one another. I implemented a program, AgentCommittee, which incorporates such behavior. AgentCommittee uses a set of characteristics that include extroversion, fatigue, resistance, confidence, and competitiveness in a series of one-on-one interactions to arrive at a group decision. The goal of AgentCommittee is not to find the best or optimal answer, but to produce a variety of good answers. I tested this program on a set of data from Compaq's EachMovie database and found that AgentCommittee was 20% more successful at finding relationships between the genre of a movie and a user's opinion of that movie than a random output generator.by John J. Bevilacqua.M.Eng

Personality representation: predicting behaviour for personalised learning support

The need for personalised support systems comes from the growing number of students that are being supported within institutions with shrinking resources. Over the last decade the use of computers and the Internet within education has become more predominant. This opens up a range of possibilities in regard to spreading that resource further and more effectively. Previous attempts to create automated systems such as intelligent tutoring systems and learning companions have been criticised for being pedagogically ineffective and relying on large knowledge sources which restrict their domain of application. More recent work on adaptive hypermedia has resolved some of these issues but has been criticised for the lack of support scope, focusing on learning paths and alternative content presentation. The student model used within these systems is also of limited scope and often based on learning history or learning styles.This research examines the potential of using a personality theory as the basis for a personalisation mechanism within an educational support system. The automated support system is designed to utilise a personality based profile to predict student behaviour. This prediction is then used to select the most appropriate feedback from a selection of reflective hints for students performing lab based programming activities. The rationale for the use of personality is simply that this is the concept psychologists use for identifying individual differences and similarities which are expressed in everyday behaviour. Therefore the research has investigated how these characteristics can be modelled in order to provide a fundamental understanding of the student user and thus be able to provide tailored support. As personality is used to describe individuals across many situations and behaviours, the use of such at the core of a personalisation mechanism may overcome the issues of scope experienced by previous methods.This research poses the following question: can a representation of personality be used to predict behaviour within a software system, in such a way, as to be able to personalise support?Putting forward the central claim that it is feasible to capture and represent personality within a software system for the purpose of personalising services.The research uses a mixed methods approach including a number and combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for both investigation and determining the feasibility of this approach.The main contribution of the thesis has been the development of a set of profiling models from psychological theories, which account for both individual differences and group similarities, as a means of personalising services. These are then applied to the development of a prototype system which utilises a personality based profile. The evidence from the evaluation of the developed prototype system has demonstrated an ability to predict student behaviour with limited success and personalise support.The limitations of the evaluation study and implementation difficulties suggest that the approach taken in this research is not feasible. Further research and exploration is required –particularly in the application to a subject area outside that of programming

Uma Abordagem Baseada em Negociacao de Agentes para a Resolucao do Problema de Alocacao Dinamica de Navios em Ber os...

Esta tese propõe uma nova abordagem para solução de problemas logísticos dinâmicos e complexos. Esta nova abordagem é baseada na constatação do fato de que na sociedade humana muitos dos problemas são resolvidos por meio da interação e negociação entre diversos seres humanos, os quais sozinhos não poderiam resolver o problema e, no entanto, no momento que se unem e trabalham em conjunto, cada um com seus recursos e capacidades, eles conseguem resolvê-los. É proposta e definida uma abordagem inspirada na sociedade humana com diversos padrões de negociação. Fez-se, também, a opção por propor um padrão de negociação inspirado na emoção humana gratidão que tem como sua principal função ser um elemento para resolver eventuais casos de impasse/conflito. Com base nesta abordagem proposta, foi criado um sistema computacional que cria uma sociedade virtual de indivíduos que possuem recursos não compartilhados e, por meio de mensagens trocadas entre si, negociam até convergir para agendar as solicitações de operação recebidas (navio para carregar e descarregar contêiner). Este sistema foi desenvolvido com base na tecnologia de agentes e sistema multiagentes. Como exemplo prático, a abordagem proposta e o sistema elaborado foram usados para a solução do problema de gerenciamento da fila de navios de um Terminal Portuário de Contêiner. Vários testes foram realizados e os resultados foram apresentados e analisados para cada um dos padrões de negociação

Modélisation multi-agents pour systèmes émergents et auto-organisés

Dans ce travail, une architecture multi-agents pour systèmes émergents et auto-organisés (MASOES) est définie. Cette architecture permet la possibilité de modéliser une système émergent et auto-organisés à travers une société d'agents (homogène ou hétérogène), qui travaillent de manière décentralisée, avec différents types de comportement: réactive, imitative et cognitive. En outre, ils sont capables de modifier dynamiquement leur comportement en fonction de leur état émotionnel, de sorte que les agents peuvent s'adapter dynamiquement à leur environnement, en favorisant l'émergence de structures. Pour cela, un modèle à deux dimensions affectives avec des émotions positives et négatives est proposé. L'importance de ce modèle affectif, c'est qu'il y a pas des modèles émotionnels pour étudier et comprendre comment modéliser et simuler émergentes et auto-organisés des processus dans un environnement multi-agent et aussi, son utilité pour étudier certains aspects de l'interaction sociale multi-agent (influence des émotions dans les comportements individuels et collectifs des agents).Leer fonéticamente D'autre part, une méthodologie pour faire la modélisation avec MASOES est spécifiée, elle explique comment décrire les éléments, relations et mécanismes au niveau individuel et collectif de la société d'agents, qui favorisent l'analyse de phénomène auto-organisatif et émergent sans modéliser le système mathématiquement. Il est également proposé une méthode de vérification pour MASOES basée sur le paradigme de la sagesse des foules et de cartes cognitives floues (CCFs), pour testé les spécifications de design et les critères de vérification établis, tels que: la densité, la diversité, l'indépendance, l'émotivité, l'auto-organisation et émergence, entre autres. Il montre également l'applicabilité de MASOES par des études de cas diverses dans différents contextes comme : Wikipedia, développement de logiciel gratuit et comportement collectif des piétons par le modèle de forces sociales. Finalement, les deux modèles proposés dans MASOES: le modèle multi-agent initiale et le modèle avec CCFs basé sur ce modèle multi-agent initiale se complètent mutuellement. Cela signifie qu'il est possible de tester le modèle multi-agent à travers le méta-modèle basé sur las CCFs. En outre, il représente une nouvelle alternative pour étudier, tester, vérifier ou valider l'auto-organisation et émergence dans les systèmes complexes et de tester le modèle multi-agent, car il est difficile de faire des tests dans ces systèmes pour le niveau d'incertitude et de complexité qu'ils traitent.In this work a multi-agent architecture for self-organizing and emergent systems (MASOES) is defined. This architecture allows the possibility of modeling a self-organizing and emergent system through a society of agents (homogenous or heterogeneous), who work in a decentralized way, with different types of behavior: reactive, imitative or cognitive. Also they are able to dynamically change their behavior according to their emotional state, so that the agents can adapt dynamically to their environment, favoring the emergence of structures. For it, a two-dimensional affective model with positive and negative emotions is proposed. The importance of this affective model is that there are not emotional models for studying and understanding how to model and simulate emergent and self-organizing processes in a multi-agent environment and also, its usefulness to study some aspects of social interaction multi-agent (e.g. the influence of emotions in individual and collective behavior of agents). On the other hand, a methodology for modeling with MASOES is specified, it explains how to describe the elements, relations and mechanisms at individual and collective level of the society of agents, that favor the analysis of the self-organizing and emergent phenomenon without modeling the system mathematically. It is also proposed a verification method for MASOES based on the paradigm of wisdom of crowds and fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs), for testing the design specifications and verification criteria established such as: density, diversity, independence, emotiveness, self-organization and emergence, among others. It also shows the applicability of MASOES for modeling diverse case studies (in a diversity of contexts) such as: Wikipedia, Free Software Development and collective behavior of pedestrians through the Social Force Model. Finally, the two models proposed in MASOES: the initial multi-agent model and the model with FCMs based on that initial multi-agent model complement each other. This means that it is possible to test the multi-agent model through the meta-model based on FCMs. Besides, it represents a novel alternative to study, test, verify or validate self-organization and emergence in complex systems and test the multi-agent model, since it is difficult to make tests in these systems directly, given the level of uncertainty and complexity they manage