426 research outputs found
From Agent Game Protocols to Implementable Roles
kostas.stathis-at-cs.rhul.ac.uk Abstract. We present a formal framework for decomposing agent interaction protocols to the roles their participants should play. The framework allows an Authority Agent that knows a protocol to compute the protocol’s roles so that it can allocate them to interested parties. We show how the Authority Agent can use the role descriptions to identify problems with the protocol and repair it on the fly, to ensure that participants will be able to implement their role requirements without compromising the protocol’s interactions. Our representation of agent interaction protocols is a game-based one and the decomposition of a game protocol into its constituent roles is based upon the branching bisimulation equivalence reduction of the game. The work extends our previous work on using games to admit agents in an artificial society by checking their competence according to the society rules. The applicability of the overall approach is illustrated by showing how to decompose the NetBill protocol into its roles. We also show how to automatically repair the interactions of a protocol that cannot be implemented in its original form.
On the Graph Theory of Majority Illusions
The popularity of an opinion in one’s direct circles is not necessarily a good indicator of its popularity in one’s entire community. For instance, when confronted with a majority of opposing opinions in one’s circles, one might get the impression that one belong s to a minority. From this perspective, network structure makes local information about global properties of the group potentially inaccurate. However, the way a social network is wired also determines what kind of information distortion can actually occur. In this paper, we discuss which classes of networks allow for a majority of agents to have the wrong impression about what the majority opinion is, that is, to be in a ‘majority illusion’.</p
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Better abstractions for reusable components & architectures
Software architecture (SA) is a crucial component of Model Driven Engineering (MDE), since it eases the communication and reuse of designs and components. However, existing languages (e.g., UML, AADL, SysML) are lacking many needed features. In particular, they provide rudimentary support for connectors, a first-class element in the components and connectors (C&C) architectural view and one of the most reusable architectural elements. This is unfortunate, since the difficult properties that need to be guaranteed for complex systems are mainly the non-functional properties, like throughput, security and dependability, which are greatly influenced by the employed connectors. This work reviews the basic abstractions of the C&C view of SA and examines extra architectural elements which can support the detailed, explicit and separate description of behaviour, interaction and control logic
Organized Anonymous Agents
Anonymity can be of great importance in distributed agent applications such as e-commerce & auctions. This paper proposes and analyzes a new approach for organized anonymity of agents based on the use of pseudonyms. A novel naming scheme is presented that can be used by agent platforms to provide automatic anonymity for all agents on its platform, or, alternatively, to provide anonymity on demand. The paper also introduces a new technique, based on the use of handles, that can be fully integrated in an agent platform. Performance measures for an anonymity service implemented for the AgentScape platform provides some insight in the overhead involved. 1
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Realising Team-Working in the Field: An Agent-based Approach
Multi-agent systems technology is applied to enable co-operation between mobile workers in the field, minimising user intervention and increasing reachability. A component-based approach is taken to simplify the management of deployed co-operation services. A Personal Assistant running on a mobile device is introduced to show how an intelligent and autonomous agent can increase the utility of users during workforce co-operation processes. Finally, a real world trial of the technology by network installation and maintenance engineers in the UK is described. Some technical issues revealed during the trial are discussed, as is the impact of the technology on the business process
TRAVOS: Trust and Reputation in the Context of Inaccurate Information Sources
In many dynamic open systems, agents have to interact with one another to achieve their goals. Here, agents may be self-interested, and when trusted to perform an action for another, may betray that trust by not performing the action as required. In addition, due to the size of such systems, agents will often interact with other agents with which they have little or no past experience. There is therefore a need to develop a model of trust and reputation that will ensure good interactions among software agents in large scale open systems. Against this background, we have developed TRAVOS (Trust and Reputation model for Agent-based Virtual OrganisationS) which models an agent's trust in an interaction partner. Specifically, trust is calculated using probability theory taking account of past interactions between agents, and when there is a lack of personal experience between agents, the model draws upon reputation information gathered from third parties. In this latter case, we pay particular attention to handling the possibility that reputation information may be inaccurate
Multi-Agent Cooperation for optimizing Weight of Electrical Aircraft Harnesses
This paper deals with minimizing aircraft electrical system weight. Because of technological advances that are spreading, electrical system of aircraft is more complex to design and requires new way to be conceived in order to reduce its weight. This paper describes how to optimize weight of harnesses thanks to the Adaptive Multi-Agent System approach. This approach is based on agent cooperation which makes global function of system emerge. Communication between agents is the focus of this approach. We will develop this approach and apply it to the weight optimisation problem. The developed software provides results that are either equivalent or better than those of classical approaches. Moreover, this software may be a precious help to engineer in charge of designing harnesses as it enables to make different tests in a quasi-real time
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