179,815 research outputs found

    Primitives for building interaction protocols

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    In this paper we propose a set of protocol primitives for the implementation of interaction protocols in Multi-agent systems. These primitives are based on the performatives most frequently used for agent interaction, and provide an abstract way of achieving conversations between agents, facilitating the creation of both standard or domain dependent interaction protocols. The proposed primitives automatically handle the exchange of messages needed to achieve the expected behavior of the interactions. Thus, the agent developer avoids the burden of implementing message processing and also the creation of messages corresponding to specifics agent communication languages. Examples of specific applications for the proposed primitives will be given.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

    Minimizing Message Size in Stochastic Communication Patterns: Fast Self-Stabilizing Protocols with 3 bits

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    This paper considers the basic PULL\mathcal{PULL} model of communication, in which in each round, each agent extracts information from few randomly chosen agents. We seek to identify the smallest amount of information revealed in each interaction (message size) that nevertheless allows for efficient and robust computations of fundamental information dissemination tasks. We focus on the Majority Bit Dissemination problem that considers a population of nn agents, with a designated subset of source agents. Each source agent holds an input bit and each agent holds an output bit. The goal is to let all agents converge their output bits on the most frequent input bit of the sources (the majority bit). Note that the particular case of a single source agent corresponds to the classical problem of Broadcast. We concentrate on the severe fault-tolerant context of self-stabilization, in which a correct configuration must be reached eventually, despite all agents starting the execution with arbitrary initial states. We first design a general compiler which can essentially transform any self-stabilizing algorithm with a certain property that uses \ell-bits messages to one that uses only log\log \ell-bits messages, while paying only a small penalty in the running time. By applying this compiler recursively we then obtain a self-stabilizing Clock Synchronization protocol, in which agents synchronize their clocks modulo some given integer TT, within O~(lognlogT)\tilde O(\log n\log T) rounds w.h.p., and using messages that contain 33 bits only. We then employ the new Clock Synchronization tool to obtain a self-stabilizing Majority Bit Dissemination protocol which converges in O~(logn)\tilde O(\log n) time, w.h.p., on every initial configuration, provided that the ratio of sources supporting the minority opinion is bounded away from half. Moreover, this protocol also uses only 3 bits per interaction.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figure

    Welfare Maximization with Limited Interaction

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    We continue the study of welfare maximization in unit-demand (matching) markets, in a distributed information model where agent's valuations are unknown to the central planner, and therefore communication is required to determine an efficient allocation. Dobzinski, Nisan and Oren (STOC'14) showed that if the market size is nn, then rr rounds of interaction (with logarithmic bandwidth) suffice to obtain an n1/(r+1)n^{1/(r+1)}-approximation to the optimal social welfare. In particular, this implies that such markets converge to a stable state (constant approximation) in time logarithmic in the market size. We obtain the first multi-round lower bound for this setup. We show that even if the allowable per-round bandwidth of each agent is nϵ(r)n^{\epsilon(r)}, the approximation ratio of any rr-round (randomized) protocol is no better than Ω(n1/5r+1)\Omega(n^{1/5^{r+1}}), implying an Ω(loglogn)\Omega(\log \log n) lower bound on the rate of convergence of the market to equilibrium. Our construction and technique may be of interest to round-communication tradeoffs in the more general setting of combinatorial auctions, for which the only known lower bound is for simultaneous (r=1r=1) protocols [DNO14]

    Efficient performative actions for e-commerce agents

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    The foundational features of multi-agent systems are communication and interaction with other agents. To achieve these features, agents have to transfer messages in the predefined format and semantics. The communication among these agents takes place with the help of ACL (Agent Communication Language). ACL is a predefined language for communication among agents that has been standardised by the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent). FIPA-ACL defines different performatives for communication among the agents. These performatives are generic, and it becomes computationally expensive to use them for a specific domain like e-commerce. These performatives do not define the exact meaning of communication for any specific domain like e-commerce. In the present research, we introduced new performatives specifically for e-commerce domain. Our designed performatives are based on FIPA-ACL so that they can still support communication within diverse agent platforms. The proposed performatives are helpful in modelling e-commerce negotiation protocol applications using the paradigm of multi-agent systems for efficient communication. For exact semantic interpretation of the proposed performatives, we also performed formal modelling of these performatives using BNF. The primary objective of our research was to provide the negotiation facility to agents, working in an e-commerce domain, in a succinct way to reduce the number of negotiation messages, time consumption and network overhead on the platform. We used an e-commerce based bidding case study among agents to demonstrate the efficiency of our approach. The results showed that there was a lot of reduction in total time required for the bidding process

    Decentralizing MAS Monitoring with DecAMon

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    We describe DecAMon, an algorithm for decentralizing the monitoring of the MAS communicative behavior described via an Agent Interaction Protocol (AIP). If some agents in the MAS are grouped together and monitored by the same monitor, instead of individually, a partial decentralization of the monitoring activity can still be obtained even if the "unique point of choice" (a.k.a. local choice) and "connectedness for sequence" (a.k.a. causality) coherence conditions are not satisfied by the protocol. Given an AIP specification, DecAMon outputs a set of "Monitoring Safe Partitions" of the agents, namely partitions P which ensure that having one monitor in charge for each group of agents in P allows detection of all and only the protocol violations that a fully centralized monitor would detect. In order to specify AIPs we use "trace expressions": this formalism can express event traces that are not context-free and can model both synchronous and asynchronous communication just by changing the underlying notion of event

    Primitives for building interaction protocols

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    In this paper we propose a set of protocol primitives for the implementation of interaction protocols in Multi-agent systems. These primitives are based on the performatives most frequently used for agent interaction, and provide an abstract way of achieving conversations between agents, facilitating the creation of both standard or domain dependent interaction protocols. The proposed primitives automatically handle the exchange of messages needed to achieve the expected behavior of the interactions. Thus, the agent developer avoids the burden of implementing message processing and also the creation of messages corresponding to specifics agent communication languages. Examples of specific applications for the proposed primitives will be given.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

    LUNES: Agent-based Simulation of P2P Systems (Extended Version)

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    We present LUNES, an agent-based Large Unstructured NEtwork Simulator, which allows to simulate complex networks composed of a high number of nodes. LUNES is modular, since it splits the three phases of network topology creation, protocol simulation and performance evaluation. This permits to easily integrate external software tools into the main software architecture. The simulation of the interaction protocols among network nodes is performed via a simulation middleware that supports both the sequential and the parallel/distributed simulation approaches. In the latter case, a specific mechanism for the communication overhead-reduction is used; this guarantees high levels of performance and scalability. To demonstrate the efficiency of LUNES, we test the simulator with gossip protocols executed on top of networks (representing peer-to-peer overlays), generated with different topologies. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.Comment: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Peer-to-Peer Architectures and Systems (MOSPAS 2011). As part of the 2011 International Conference on High Performance Computing and Simulation (HPCS 2011
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