An Agent Architecture for Dynamic Re-design of Agents

. This paper presents a generic architecture for an agent capable of designing and creating new agents. The design agent itself is based on an existing generic agent model, and includes a refinement of a generic model for design, in which strategic reasoning and dynamic management of requirements are explicitly modelled. This model is refined for the design of agents, or (parts of) multi-agent systems. It includes an explicit formal representation at a logical level of (1) requirements that can be formulated for agents and multi-agent systems, and (2) design object descriptions of a (part of a) multi-agent system. The generic architecture has been formally specified in DESIRE, and has been tested in a prototype application. 1 1 Introduction Agents that are able to dynamically design and create new agents, or to dynamically modify existing agents can be very useful. For example, Internet agents that are capable of dynamically creating new agents to assist them in information gatheri..

A multi-agent architecture for internet distributed computing system

This thesis presents the developed taxonomy of the agent-based distributed computing systems. Based on this taxonomy, a design, implementation, analysis and distribution protocol of a multi-agent architecture for internet-based distributed computing system was developed. A prototype of the designed architecture was implemented on Spider III using the IBM Aglets software development kit (ASDK 2.0) and the language Java

Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

A multi-agent systems for design simulation framework:experiments with virtual-physical-social feedback for architecture

This paper presents research on the development of multiagent systems (MAS) for integrated and performance driven architectural design. It presents the development of a simulation framework that bridges architecture and engineering, through a series of multi-agent based experiments. The research is motivated to combine multiple design agencies into a system for managing and optimizing architectural form, across multiple objectives and contexts. The research anticipates the incorporation of feedback from real world human behavior and user preferences with physics based structural form finding and environmental analysis data. The framework is a multi-agent system that provides design teams with informed design solutions, which simultaneously optimize and satisfy competing design objectives. The initial results for building structures are measured in terms of the level of lighting improvements and qualitatively in geometric terms. Critical to the research is the elaboration of the system and the feedback loops that are possible when using the multi-agent systems approach

A software toolkit for web-based virtual environments based on a shared database

We propose a software toolkit for developing complex web-based user interfaces, incorporating such things as multi-user facilities, virtual environments (VEs), and interface agents. The toolkit is based on a novel software architecture that combines ideas from multi-agent platforms and user interface (UI) architectures. It provides a distributed shared database with publish-subscribe facilities. This enables UI components to observe the state and activities of any other components in the system easily. The system runs in a web-based environment. The toolkit is comprised of several programming and other specification languages, providing a complete suite of systems design languages. We illustrate the toolkit by means of a couple of examples

Adding X-security to Carrel: security for agent-based healthcare applications

The high growth of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) in Open Networks with initiatives such as Agentcities1 requires development in many different areas such as scalable and secure agent platforms, location services, directory services, and systems management. In our case we have focused our effort on security for agent systems. The driving force of this paper is provide a practical vision of how security mechanisms could be introduced for multi-agent applications. Our case study for this experiment is Carrel [9]: an Agent-based application in the Organ and Tissue transplant domain. The selection of this application is due to its characteristics as a real scenario and use of high-risk data for example, a study of the 21 most visited health-related web sites on the Internet discovered that personal information provided at many of the sites was being inadvertently leaked for unauthorized persons. These factors indicate to us that Carrel would be a suitable environment in order to test existing security safeguards. Furthermore, we believe that the experience gathered will be useful for other MAS. In order to achieve our purpose we describe the design, architecture and implementation of security elements on MAS for the Carrel System.Postprint (published version