Automatic Control Synthesis for Agents and Their Cooperation in MAS

Automatic synthesis of control for a kind of DES (discrete-event systems) is discussed and an approach to it is proposed and presented. The approach consists in the proposal of the control synthesis procedure based on bipartite directed graphs yielding both the feasible control trajectories and the corresponding state ones. Soundness of the approach is tested on examples. Then, the usage of the approach is combined with the supervisor synthesis in order to complement it. Applicability of such approach is demonstrated by means of several illustrative examples of both the single agents and the agent cooperation in MAS

Meeting the challenges of decentralized embedded applications using multi-agent systems

International audienceToday embedded applications become large scale andstrongly constrained. They require a decentralized embedded intelligencegenerating challenges for embedded systems. A multi-agent approach iswell suited to model and design decentralized embedded applications.It is naturally able to take up some of these challenges. But somespecific points have to be introduced, enforced or improved in multiagentapproaches to reach all features and all requirements. In thisarticle, we present a study of specific activities that can complementmulti-agent paradigm in the ”embedded” context.We use our experiencewith the DIAMOND method to introduce and illustrate these featuresand activities

Synthesis of novel PCP-pincer functionalized metal organic framework for selective CO₂ chemisorption

Herein, we report the synthesis of a novel tetra(carboxylated) PCP-pincer ligand as building block of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). The pincer ligand is potentially appropriate for cyclometallating various of soft metals, such as Pd, and the resulting cyclometallated pincer ligand is geometrically rigid for synthesis of MOFs. A porous 3D MOF is formed by reacting the cyclometalloligand and Co(II) ions via solvothermal synthesis method and studied by single crystal X-ray diffraction. The adsorption-desorption isotherm of the crystalline materials indicates CO₂ gas is preferentially able to access the pores over other gases like N₂ and CO. Furthermore, after the Pd-Cl groups inside the pores are modified to be Pd-Me, CO₂ gas can be inserted rapidly at 1 atm and room temperature. More interestingly, taking the advantage of adsorption property, CO insertion is unflavored in Pd-N₃ modified version. Detailed explorations are done via FTIR and solid state MSA-NMR.Chemistr

The attitude of school supervisors in a school district in northeast Puerto Rico toward the evaluation process as related to the clinical supervision process.

The evaluation of the teacher is one of the first steps in the evaluation of the learning process. This evaluation can be of great help to educational systems if it is understood as cooperative and if it is collaboratively planned. It can help to motivate, give satisfaction, reveal a teacher\u27s weak and strong points, make better use of every teacher\u27s potential, and keep open lines of communication and common effort. The modern conception of the word evaluation and the necessary data should determine the alternatives that will serve as a guide in making decisions about education. In this exploratory study, the main objective was to analyze the attitudes of school supervisors from a target public school district in the northeastern part of Puerto Rico toward the evaluation process as related to the clinical supervision process. The target population was 45 school supervisors, of whom 35 responded--25 (71%) female and 10 (28.6%) male. Their ages ranged between 20 and 50 years. The independent variable in this study was the evaluation process as based on clinical supervision. The dependent variable was the attitude of the school supervisors targeted concerning fairness, flexibility, moral support, efficiency, simplicity, patience, cordiality, autonomy, and self-evaluation. The general null hypothesis was rejected. This hypothesis claimed that the percentage of supervisors having a positive attitude towards the focus of the clinical supervision process is not significantly higher than theoretically expected. It was expected that only 50% would show a positive attitude. The design used in this study is descriptive. The objective is to describe what exists with reference to the variations and conditions of a situation. A questionnaire divided into six parts was used, composed primarily of Yes/No questions plus an intensity scale following the Likert model. In order to analyze statistically the results of the findings, the average frequency and percentages were used and expressed in tables and figures. To summarize, the population made up of the school supervisors showed a very positive attitude toward the clinical supervision process since, in each premise, when it is expressed in percentages, more than 80% of the population showed a positive attitude toward the evaluation process as related to clinical supervision

Self-organising agent communities for autonomic resource management

The autonomic computing paradigm addresses the operational challenges presented by increasingly complex software systems by proposing that they be composed of many autonomous components, each responsible for the run-time reconfiguration of its own dedicated hardware and software components. Consequently, regulation of the whole software system becomes an emergent property of local adaptation and learning carried out by these autonomous system elements. Designing appropriate local adaptation policies for the components of such systems remains a major challenge. This is particularly true where the system’s scale and dynamism compromise the efficiency of a central executive and/or prevent components from pooling information to achieve a shared, accurate evidence base for their negotiations and decisions.In this paper, we investigate how a self-regulatory system response may arise spontaneously from local interactions between autonomic system elements tasked with adaptively consuming/providing computational resources or services when the demand for such resources is continually changing. We demonstrate that system performance is not maximised when all system components are able to freely share information with one another. Rather, maximum efficiency is achieved when individual components have only limited knowledge of their peers. Under these conditions, the system self-organises into appropriate community structures. By maintaining information flow at the level of communities, the system is able to remain stable enough to efficiently satisfy service demand in resource-limited environments, and thus minimise any unnecessary reconfiguration whilst remaining sufficiently adaptive to be able to reconfigure when service demand changes

Simulation based design environment for multi-agent systems in buildings

With increasing experience and understanding of the behavior of users in buildings, it is very often difficult to properly build a control system that operates in the real world. To explore such a potential, this paper addresses a new approach to building automation systems that utilizes hybrids systems in order to model large scale systems typically arising in multi-agents. In fact hybrid systems are crucial for solving complex problems and for designing real-time controllers that can be used to automatically regulate HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning) systems and building components. A statechart formalism is also used for modelling of the entire building system behaviour in the structural analysis paradigm, in order to achieve a comfortable indoor climate while fulfilling operating constraints. Particularity, this paper concerns the relevance and reliability of integrating control and building performance simulation environments by run-time coupling, over TCP/IP protocol suite. In addition, this paper involves a case-study with two important steps; first consists of experiments obtained in TU Delft test-cell, and then simulation results are obtained with the use of run-time coupling approach