498 research outputs found

    Agent programming in the cognitive era

    Get PDF
    It is claimed that, in the nascent ‘Cognitive Era’, intelligent systems will be trained using machine learning techniques rather than programmed by software developers. A contrary point of view argues that machine learning has limitations, and, taken in isolation, cannot form the basis of autonomous systems capable of intelligent behaviour in complex environments. In this paper, we explore the contributions that agent-oriented programming can make to the development of future intelligent systems. We briefly review the state of the art in agent programming, focussing particularly on BDI-based agent programming languages, and discuss previous work on integrating AI techniques (including machine learning) in agent-oriented programming. We argue that the unique strengths of BDI agent languages provide an ideal framework for integrating the wide range of AI capabilities necessary for progress towards the next-generation of intelligent systems. We identify a range of possible approaches to integrating AI into a BDI agent architecture. Some of these approaches, e.g., ‘AI as a service’, exploit immediate synergies between rapidly maturing AI techniques and agent programming, while others, e.g., ‘AI embedded into agents’ raise more fundamental research questions, and we sketch a programme of research directed towards identifying the most appropriate ways of integrating AI capabilities into agent programs

    Human behaviour modelling in complex socio-technical systems : an agent based approach

    No full text
    For many years we have been striving to understand human behaviour and our interactions with our socio-technological environment. By advancing our knowledge in this area, we have helped the design of new or improved work processes and technologies. Historically, much of the work in analysing social interactions has been conducted within the social sciences. However, computer simulation has brought an extra tool in trying to understand and model human behaviours. Using an agent based approach this presentation describes my work in constructing computational models of human behaviour for informing design through simulation. With examples from projects in two main application areas of crisis and emergency management, and energy management I describe how my work addresses some main issues in agent based social simulation. The first concerns the process by which we develop these models. The second lies in the nature of socio-technical systems. Human societies are a perfect example of a complex system exhibiting characteristics of self-organisation, adaptability and showing emergent phenomena such as cooperation and robustness. I describe how complex systems theory may be applied to improve our understanding of socio-technical systems, and how our micro level interactions lead to emergent mutual awareness for problem-solving. From agent based simulation systems I show how context awareness may be modelled. Looking forward to the future, I discuss how the increasing prevalence of artificial agents in our society will cause us to re-examine the new types of interactions and cooperative behaviours that will emerge.Depuis de nombreuses années, nous nous sommes efforcés de comprendre le comportement humain et nos interactions avec l'environnement sociotechnique. Grâce à l'avancée de nos connaissances dans ce domaine, nous avons contribué à la conception de technologies et de processus de travail nouveaux ou améliorés. Historiquement, une part importante du travail d'analyse des interactions sociales fut entreprise au sein des sciences sociales. Cependant, la simulation informatique a apporté un nouvel outil pour tenter de comprendre et de modéliser les comportements humains. En utilisant une approche à base d'agents, cette présentation décrit mon travail sur la construction de modèles informatiques du comportement humain pour guider la conception par la simulation. A l'aide d'exemples issus de projets des deux domaines d'application que sont la gestion des crises et de l'urgence et la gestion de l'énergie, je décris comment mon travail aborde certains problèmes centraux à la simulation sociale à base d'agents. Le premier concerne le processus par lequel nous développons ces modèles. Le second problème provient de la nature des systèmes sociotechniques. Les sociétés humaines constituent un exemple parfait de système complexe possédant des caractéristiques d'auto-organisation et d'adaptabilité, et affichant des phénomènes émergents tels que la coopération et la robustesse. Je décris comment la théorie des systèmes complexes peut être appliquée pour améliorer notre compréhension des systèmes sociotechniques, et comment nos interactions au niveau microscopique mènent à l'émergence d'une conscience mutuelle pour la résolution de problèmes. A partir de systèmes de simulation à base d'agents, je montre comment la conscience du contexte peut être modélisée. En terme de perspectives, j'expliquerai comment la hausse de la prévalence des agents artificiels dans notre société nous forcera à considérer de nouveaux types d'interactions et de comportements coopératifs

    Agents for educational games and simulations

    Get PDF
    This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

    Agent Based Control of Electric Power Systems with Distributed Generation

    Get PDF

    A model of empathy for artificial agent teamwork.

    Get PDF
    This thesis introduces a model of empathy as a basis for helpful behaviour in teams consisting purely of artificial agents that collaborate on practical problem-solving tasks, and investigates whether the performance of such teams can benefit from empathic help between members as the analogy with human teams might suggest. Guided by existing models of natural empathy in psychology and neuroscience, it identifies the potential empathy factors for artificial agents, as well as the mechanisms by which they produce affective and behavioural responses. The performance of empathic agent teams situated in a microworld similar to the Coloured Trails game is studied through simulation experiments, with the model parameters optimized by a genetic algorithm. For low to moderate levels of random disturbance in the environment, empathic help is superior to random help, and it outperforms rational help as rational decision complexity grows, in particular at higher levels of environmental disturbance. --P. ii.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b180582

    Abductive Design of BDI Agent-based Digital Twins of Organizations

    Get PDF
    For a Digital Twin - a precise, virtual representation of a physical counterpart - of a human-like system to be faithful and complete, it must appeal to a notion of anthropomorphism (i.e., attributing human behaviour to non-human entities) to imitate (1) the externally visible behaviour and (2) the internal workings of that system. Although the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm was not developed for this purpose, it has been used successfully in human modeling applications. In this sense, we introduce in this thesis the notion of abductive design of BDI agent-based Digital Twins of organizations, which builds on two powerful reasoning disciplines: reverse engineering (to recreate the visible behaviour of the target system) and goal-driven eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) (for viewing the behaviour of the target system through the lens of BDI agents). Precisely speaking, the overall problem we are trying to address in this thesis is to “Find a BDI agent program that best explains (in the sense of formal abduction) the behaviour of a target system based on its past experiences . To do so, we propose three goal-driven XAI techniques: (1) abductive design of BDI agents, (2) leveraging imperfect explanations and (3) mining belief-based explanations. The resulting approach suggests that using goal-driven XAI to generate Digital Twins of organizations in the form of BDI agents can be effective, even in a setting with limited information about the target system’s behaviour

    Proceedings of The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)

    Get PDF
    http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-627/allproceedings.pdfInternational audienceMALLOW-2010 is a third edition of a series initiated in 2007 in Durham, and pursued in 2009 in Turin. The objective, as initially stated, is to "provide a venue where: the cost of participation was minimum; participants were able to attend various workshops, so fostering collaboration and cross-fertilization; there was a friendly atmosphere and plenty of time for networking, by maximizing the time participants spent together"

    A BDI Empathic Agent Model Based on a Multidimensional Cross-Cultural Emotion Representation

    Full text link
    Tesis por compendio[ES] Los seres humanos somos por naturaleza seres afectivos, las emociones, el estado de ánimo, nuestra personalidad, o nuestras relaciones con los demás guían nuestras motivaciones y nuestras decisiones. Una de las principales habilidades cognitivas relacionadas con el afecto es la empatía. La empatía es un constructo psicológico cuya definición ha ido evolucionando a lo largo de los años y cuyo significado hace referencia a un amplio abanico de competencias afectivas y cognitivas que son fundamentales en el desarrollo del ser humano como ser social. El uso de la empatía en el ámbito de la inteligencia artificial puede revolucionar la forma en la que interactuamos con las máquinas así como la forma en la que simulamos el comportamiento humano. Por otro lado, hay que tener en cuenta que los seres humanos habitualmente acudimos al uso de distintas palabras como ``triste'' o ``contento'' para expresar o verbalizar el estado afectivo. Sin embargo, estas palabras son simplificaciones que abarcan un amplio espectro de procesos cognitivos y estados mentales. Además, hay que considerar que estas palabras tienen una alta dependencia del idioma y la cultura en la que se utilizan. Por tanto, los modelos de representación computacional de los estados afectivos deben se capaces de adaptarse a distintos entornos culturales y de permitir que un agente exprese o represente, mediante palabras, un determinado estado afectivo. En esta tesis se propone un nuevo modelo de agente empático capaz de adaptar su comportamiento a distintos entornos culturales. Para ello, en primer lugar, se presenta una nueva metodología basada en la experimentación para adaptar un espacio de representación de emociones basado en las dimensiones del placer y la activación para la simulación y el reconocimiento computacional afectivo a diferentes entornos culturales. Los resultados del experimento realizado con hispanohablantes europeos se utilizan para proporcionar un nuevo modelo basado en la lógica difusa para representar estados afectivos en las dimensiones de placer y activación utilizando un enfoque de coordenadas polares. Para demostrar que las diferencias culturales afectan a los valores de placer y activación asociados a cada emoción, el experimento se repitió con participantes portugueses y suecos. En segundo lugar, se presenta un nuevo modelo de elicitación de emociones en agentes afectivos que utiliza lógica difusa. Las emociones generadas en el agente por las reglas de valoración difusa se expresan en el modelo de representación del afecto resultante de los experimentos previamente descritos. Además, se propone un nuevo proceso de regulación del afecto que adapta el estado de ánimo del agente, representado mediante un vector en el espacio placer-activación, cada vez que una emoción es elicitada. En tercer lugar, se propone una formalización de la sintaxis, la semántica y el ciclo de razonamiento de AgentSpeak para permitir el desarrollo de agentes afectivos con capacidades empáticas. Partiendo de las teorías de valoración empática y regulación empática, se modifica la estructura de razonamiento del agente para permitir que la empatía afecte al proceso de toma de decisiones. Finalmente, se presenta un modelo de agente pedagógico empático para la educación sobre buenas prácticas en el uso de las redes sociales. El agente es capaz de reconocer la emoción del usuario cuando interactúa con la red social. En base a la emoción del usuario y su comportamiento en la red social, el agente estima un plan para educar al usuario en el uso correcto y seguro de las redes sociales.[CA] Els éssers humans som per naturalesa éssers afectius, les emocions, l'estat d'ànim, la nostra personalitat o les nostres relacions amb els altres guien les nostres motivacions i les nostres decisions. Una de les habilitats cognitives principals relacionades amb l'afecte és l'empatia. L'empatia és un constructe psicològic la definició del qual ha anat evolucionant al llarg dels anys i el significat del qual fa referència a un ampli ventall de competències afectives i cognitives que són fonamentals en el desenvolupament de l'ésser humà com a ésser social. L'ús de l'empatia en l'àmbit de la intel·ligència artificial pot revolucionar la forma en la qual interactuem amb les màquines així com la forma en què simulem el comportament humà. D'altra banda, cal tenir en compte que els éssers humans habitualment acudim a l'ús de diferents paraules com ``trist'' o ``content'' per expressar o verbalitzar l'estat afectiu. Tot i això, aquestes paraules són simplificacions que abasten un ampli espectre de processos cognitius i estats mentals. A més, cal considerar que aquestes paraules tenen una alta dependència de l'idioma i la cultura en què s'utilitzen. Per tant, els models de representació computacional dels estats afectius han de ser capaços d'adaptar-se a diferents entorns culturals i de permetre que un agent expresse o represente, mitjançant paraules, un estat afectiu determinat. En aquesta tesi es proposa un nou model d'agent empàtic capaç d'adaptar el seu comportament a diferents entorns culturals. Per això, en primer lloc, es presenta una metodologia nova basada en l'experimentació per adaptar un espai de representació d'emocions basat en les dimensions del plaer i l'activació per a la simulació i el reconeixement computacional afectiu a diferents entorns culturals. Els resultats de l'experiment realitzat amb hispanoparlants europeus es fan servir per proporcionar un nou model basat en la lògica difusa per representar estats afectius en les dimensions de plaer i activació mitjançant un enfocament de coordenades polars. Per demostrar que les diferències culturals afecten els valors de plaer i activació associats a cada emoció, l'experiment es va repetir amb participants portuguesos i suecs. En segon lloc, es presenta un nou model d'elicitació d'emocions en agents afectius que fa servir lògica difusa. Les emocions generades a l'agent per les regles de valoració difusa s'expressen en el model de representació de l'afecte resultant dels experiments descrits prèviament. A més, es proposa un nou procés de regulació de l'afecte que adapta l'estat d'ànim de l'agent, representat mitjançant un vector a l'espai plaer-activació, cada cop que una emoció és elicitada. En tercer lloc, es proposa una formalització de la sintaxi, semàntica i cicle de raonament d'AgentSpeak per permetre el desenvolupament d'agents afectius amb capacitats empàtiques. Partint de les teories de valoració empàtica i regulació empàtica, es modifica l'estructura de raonament de l'agent per permetre que l'empatia afecti el procés de presa de decisions. Finalment, es presenta un model d'agent pedagògic empàtic per a l'educació sobre bones pràctiques en l'ús de les xarxes socials. L'agent és capaç de reconèixer l'emoció de l'usuari quan interactua amb la xarxa social. En base a l'emoció de l'usuari i el seu comportament a la xarxa social, l'agent estima un pla per educar l'usuari en l'ús correcte i segur de les xarxes socials.[EN] Human beings are, by nature, affective beings; our emotions, moods, personality, or relationships with others guide our motivations and our decisions. One of the main cognitive abilities related to affect is empathy. Empathy is a psychological construct whose definition has evolved over the years and whose meaning refers to a wide range of affective and cognitive competencies that are fundamental in the development of human beings as social beings. The use of empathy in the field of artificial intelligence can revolutionize the way we interact with machines as well as the way we simulate human behavior. On the other hand, it must be considered that human beings usually resort to the use of different words such as ``sad'' or ``happy'' to express or verbalize our affective state. However, these words are simplifications that cover a wide spectrum of cognitive processes and mental states. Moreover, it should be considered that these words have a high dependence on the language and culture in which they are used. Therefore, computational representation models of affective states must adaptable to different cultural environments and to allow an agent to express or represent, by means of words, a given affective state. In this thesis, a new model of empathic agent capable of adapting its behavior to different cultural environments is proposed. To this end, first, a new experiment-based methodology to adapt an emotion representation space based on the dimensions of pleasure and arousal for simulation and affective computational recognition to different cultural environments is presented. The results of an experiment conducted with European Spanish speakers are used to provide a new fuzzy logic-based model for representing affective states in the dimensions of pleasure and arousal using a polar coordinate approach. To prove that cultural differences affect the pleasure and arousal values associated with each emotion, the experiment was replicated with Portuguese and Swedish participants. Secondly, a new model of emotion elicitation in affective agents using fuzzy logic is presented. The emotions generated in the agent by the fuzzy appraisal rules are expressed in the model of affect representation resulting from the previously described experiments. In addition, a new affect regulation process is proposed to adapt the agent's mood, represented by a vector in the pleasure-arousal space, when an emotion is elicited. Third, a formalization of the syntax, semantics and reasoning cycle of AgentSpeak to enable the development of affective agents with empathic capabilities is presented. Drawing on the theories of empathic appraisal and empathic regulation, the agent's reasoning structure is modified to allow empathy to affect the decision-making process. Finally, a model of an empathic pedagogical agent for education on good practices in the use of social networks is introduced. The agent is able to recognize the user's emotion when interacting with the social network. Based on the user's emotion and behavior in the social network, the agent estimates a plan to educate the user in the correct and secure use of social networks.This thesis has been partially supported by the Generalitat Valenciana and European Social Fund by the FPI grant ACIF/2017/085 and by the Spanish Government project PID2020- 113416RB-I00.Taverner Aparicio, JJ. (2022). A BDI Empathic Agent Model Based on a Multidimensional Cross-Cultural Emotion Representation [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/181181TESISCompendi

    Multi-Agent Systems

    Get PDF
    This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019
    corecore