The 'what' and 'how' of learning in design, invited paper

Previous experiences hold a wealth of knowledge which we often take for granted and use unknowingly through our every day working lives. In design, those experiences can play a crucial role in the success or failure of a design project, having a great deal of influence on the quality, cost and development time of a product. But how can we empower computer based design systems to acquire this knowledge? How would we use such systems to support design? This paper outlines some of the work which has been carried out in applying and developing Machine Learning techniques to support the design activity; particularly in utilising previous designs and learning the design process

Automating decision making to help establish norm-based regulations

Norms have been extensively proposed as coordination mechanisms for both agent and human societies. Nevertheless, choosing the norms to regulate a society is by no means straightforward. The reasons are twofold. First, the norms to choose from may not be independent (i.e, they can be related to each other). Second, different preference criteria may be applied when choosing the norms to enact. This paper advances the state of the art by modeling a series of decision-making problems that regulation authorities confront when choosing the policies to establish. In order to do so, we first identify three different norm relationships -namely, generalisation, exclusivity, and substitutability- and we then consider norm representation power, cost, and associated moral values as alternative preference criteria. Thereafter, we show that the decision-making problems faced by policy makers can be encoded as linear programs, and hence solved with the aid of state-of-the-art solvers

MACS: Multi-agent COTR system for Defense Contracting

The field of intelligent multi-agent systems has expanded rapidly in the recent past. Multi-agent architectures and systems are being investigated and continue to develop. To date, little has been accomplished in applying multi-agent systems to the defense acquisition domain. This paper describes the design, development, and related considerations of a multi-agent system in the area of procurement and contracting for the defense acquisition community

Multi-Objective Calibration For Agent-Based Models

Agent-based modelling is already proving to be an immensely useful tool for scientific and industrial modelling applications. Whilst the building of such models will always be something between an art and a science, once a detailed model has been built, the process of parameter calibration should be performed as precisely as possible. This task is often made difficult by the proliferation of model parameters with non-linear interactions. In addition to this, these models generate a large number of outputs, and their ‘accuracy’ can be measured by many different, often conflicting, criteria. In this paper we demonstrate the use of multi-objective optimisation tools to calibrate just such an agent-based model. We use an agent-based model of a financial market as an exemplar and calibrate the model using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The technique is automated and requires no explicit weighting of criteria prior to calibration. The final choice of parameter set can be made after calibration with the additional input of the domain expert

Institutional consequentialism and global governance

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system

Ontology acquisition and exchange of evolutionary product-brokering agents

Agent-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been booming with the development of the Internet and agent technologies. However, little effort has been devoted to exploring the learning and evolving capabilities of software agents. This paper addresses issues of evolving software agents in e-commerce applications. An agent structure with evolution features is proposed with a focus on internal hierarchical knowledge. We argue that knowledge base of agents should be the cornerstone for their evolution capabilities, and agents can enhance their knowledge bases by exchanging knowledge with other agents. In this paper, product ontology is chosen as an instance of knowledge base. We propose a new approach to facilitate ontology exchange among e-commerce agents. The ontology exchange model and its formalities are elaborated. Product-brokering agents have been designed and implemented, which accomplish the ontology exchange process from request to integration

On the Identification of Agents in the Design of Production Control Systems

This paper describes a methodology that is being developed for designing and building agent-based systems for the domain of production control. In particular, this paper deals with the steps that are involved in identifying the agents and in specifying their responsibilities. The methodology aims to be usable by engineers who have a background in production control but who have no prior experience in agent technology. For this reason, the methodology needs to be very prescriptive with respect to the agent-related aspects of design

Pro-active Meeting Assistants : Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all