Creating agent platforms to host agent-mediated services that share resources

After a period where the Internet was exclusively filled with content, the present efforts are moving towards services, which handle the raw information to create value from it. Therefore labors to create a wide collection of agent-based services are being perfomed in several projects, such as Agentcities does. In this work we present an architecture for agent platforms named a-Buildings. The aim of the proposed architecture is to ease the creation, installation, search and management of agent-mediated services and the share of resources among services. To do so the a-Buildings architecture creates a new level of abstraction on top of the standard FIPA agent platform specification. Basically, an a-Building is a service-oriented platform which offers a set of low level services to the agents it hosts. We define low level services as those required services that are neccesary to create more complex high level composed services.Postprint (published version

OperA/ALIVE/OperettA

Comprehensive models for organizations must, on the one hand, be able to specify global goals and requirements but, on the other hand, cannot assume that particular actors will always act according to the needs and expectations of the system design. Concepts as organizational rules (Zambonelli 2002), norms and institutions (Dignum and Dignum 2001; Esteva et al. 2002), and social structures (Parunak and Odell 2002) arise from the idea that the effective engineering of organizations needs high-level, actor-independent concepts and abstractions that explicitly define the organization in which agents live (Zambonelli 2002).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Generic Agent Organisation Framework For Autonomic Systems

Autonomic computing is being advocated as a tool for managing large, complex computing systems. Specifically, self-organisation provides a suitable approach for developing such autonomic systems by incorporating self-management and adaptation properties into large-scale distributed systems. To aid in this development, this paper details a generic problem-solving agent organisation framework that can act as a modelling and simulation platform for autonomic systems. Our framework describes a set of service-providing agents accomplishing tasks through social interactions in dynamically changing organisations. We particularly focus on the organisational structure as it can be used as the basis for the design, development and evaluation of generic algorithms for self-organisation and other approaches towards autonomic systems

Directed deadline obligations in agent-based business contracts

There are B2B relationships that presume cooperation in contract enactment. This issue should be taken into account when modeling, for computational handling, contractual commitments through obligations. Deadline obligations have been modeled by considering that reaching the deadline without compliance brings up a violation. When modeling commitments in business contracts, directed obligations have been studied for identifying two agents: the obligation's bearer and the counterparty, who may claim for legal action in case of non-compliance. We argue in favor of a directed deadline obligation approach, taking inspiration on international legislation over trade procedures. Our proposal to model contractual obligations is based on authorizations granted in specific states of an obligation lifecycle model, which we formalize using temporal logic and implement in a rule-based system. The performance of a contractual relationship is supported by a model of flexible deadlines, which allow for further cooperation between autonomous agents. As a result, the decision-making space of agents concerning contractual obligations is enlarged and becomes richer. We discuss the issues that agents should take into account in this extended setting

Using a normative framework to explore the prototyping of wireless grids

The capacity for normative frameworks to capture the essential features of interactions between components in open architectures suggests they might also be of assistance in an early, rapid prototyping phase of system development, helping to refine concepts, identify actors, explore policies and evaluate feasibility. As an exercise to examine this thesis, we investigate the concept of the wireless grid. Wireless grids have been proposed to address the energy issues arising from a new generation of mobile phones, the idea being that local communication with other mobile phones, being cheaper, can be used in combination with network communication to achieve common goals while at the same time extending the battery duty cycle. This results in a social dilemma, as it is advantageous for rational users to benefit from the energy savings without any contribution to the cooperation, as every commitment has its price. We present a necessarily simplified model, whose purpose is to provide us with the foundation to explore issues in the management of such a framework, policies to encourage collaborative behaviour, and the means to evaluate the effects on energy consumption