On the Mutability of Protocols

Centre for Intelligent Systems and their ApplicationsThe task of developing a framework for which agents can communicate reliably and flexibly in open systems is not trivial. This thesis addresses the dichotomy between reliable communication and facilitation of the autonomy of agents to create more flexible and emergent interactions. By the introduction of adaptations to a distributed protocol language, agents benefit from the ability to communicate interaction protocols to elucidate the social norms (thus creating more reliable communication). Yet, this approach also provides the functionality for the agent to unilaterally introduce new paths for the conversation to explore unforeseen opportunities and options (thus restoring more autonomy than possible with static protocols). The foundation of this work is Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC). LCC is a distributed protocol language and framework in which agents coordinate their own interactions by their message passing activities. In order to ensure that adaptations to the protocols are done in a reasonable way, we examine the use of two models of communication to guide any transformations to the protocols. We describe the use of FIPA's ACL and ultimately its unsuitability for this approach as well as the more fecund task of implementing dialogue games, an model of argumentation, as dynamic protocols. The existing attempts to develop a model that can encompass the gulf between reliability and autonomy in communication have had varying degrees of success. It is the purpose and the result of the research described in this thesis to develop an alloy of the various models, by the introduction of dynamic and distributed protocols, to develop a framework stronger than its constituents. Though this is successful, the derivations of the protocols can be dificult to reconstruct. To this end, this thesis also describes a method of protocol synthesis inspired by models of human communication that can express the dialogues created by the previous approaches but also have a fully accountable path of construction. Not only does this thesis explore a unique and novel approach to agent communication, it is tested through a practical implementation

Models of Interaction as a Grounding for Peer to Peer Knowledge Sharing

Most current attempts to achieve reliable knowledge sharing on a large scale have relied on pre-engineering of content and supply services. This, like traditional knowledge engineering, does not by itself scale to large, open, peer to peer systems because the cost of being precise about the absolute semantics of services and their knowledge rises rapidly as more services participate. We describe how to break out of this deadlock by focusing on semantics related to interaction and using this to avoid dependency on a priori semantic agreement; instead making semantic commitments incrementally at run time. Our method is based on interaction models that are mobile in the sense that they may be transferred to other components, this being a mechanism for service composition and for coalition formation. By shifting the emphasis to interaction (the details of which may be hidden from users) we can obtain knowledge sharing of sufficient quality for sustainable communities of practice without the barrier of complex meta-data provision prior to community formation

A structured approach to VO reconfigurations through Policies

One of the strength of Virtual Organisations is their ability to dynamically and rapidly adapt in response to changing environmental conditions. Dynamic adaptability has been studied in other system areas as well and system management through policies has crystallized itself as a very prominent solution in system and network administration. However, these areas are often concerned with very low-level technical aspects. Previous work on the APPEL policy language has been aimed at dynamically adapting system behaviour to satisfy end-user demands and - as part of STPOWLA - APPEL was used to adapt workflow instances at runtime. In this paper we explore how the ideas of APPEL and STPOWLA can be extended from workflows to the wider scope of Virtual Organisations. We will use a Travel Booking VO as example.Comment: In Proceedings FAVO 2011, arXiv:1204.579

Centre for Intelligent Systems and Applications

The task of developing a framework for which agents can communicate reliably and flexibly in open systems is not trivial. This thesis addresses the dichotomy between re-liable communication and facilitation of the autonomy of agents to create more flexible and emergent interactions. By the introduction of adaptations to a distributed proto-col language, agents benefit from the ability to communicate interaction protocols to elucidate the social norms (thus creating more reliable communication). Yet, this ap-proach also provides the functionality for the agent to unilaterally introduce new paths for the conversation to explore unforeseen opportunities and options (thus restoring more autonomy than possible with static protocols). The foundation of this work is Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC). LCC is a distributed protocol language and framework in which agents coordinate their own interactions by their message passing activities. In order to ensure that adaptations to the protocols are done in a reasonable way, we examine the use of two models of communication to guide any transformations to the protocols. We describe the use of FIPA’s ACL and ultimately its unsuitability for this approach as well as the more fecund task of implementing dialogue games, an model of argumentation, as dynamic protocols. The existing attempts to develop a model that can encompass the gulf between reliability and autonomy in communication have had varying degrees of success. It is the purpose and the result of the research described in this thesis to develop an alloy of the various models, by the introduction of dynamic and distributed protocols, to develop a framework stronger than its constituents. Though this is successful, the derivations of the protocols can be difficult to reconstruct. To this end, this thesis also describes a method of protocol synthesis inspired by models of human communication that can express the dialogues created by the previous approaches but also have a fully accountable path of construction. Not only does this thesis explore a unique and novel approach to agent communication, it is tested through a practical implementation. ii

Amongst first-class protocols

Abstract. The ubiquity of our increasingly distributed and complex computing environments have necessitated the development of programming approaches and paradigms that can automatically manage the numerous tasks and processes involved. Hence, research into agency and multiagent systems are of more and more interest as an automation solution. Coordination becomes a central issue in these environments. The most promising approach is the use of interaction protocols. Interaction protocols specify the interaction or social norms for the participating agents. However the orthodoxy see protocols as rigid specifications that are defined a priori. A recent development in this field of research is the specification of protocols that are treated as first class computational entities. This paper explores the most prominent approaches and compares them.

Introducing Social Semantic Journalism

In the event of breaking news, a wealth of crowd-sourced data, in the form of text, video and image, becomesavailable on the Social Web. In order to incorporate this data into a news story, the journalist mustprocess, compile and verify content within a very short timespan. Currently this is done manually andis a time-consuming and labour-intensive process for media organisations. This paper proposes SocialSemantic Journalism as a solution to help those journalists and editors. Semantic metadata, natural languageprocessing (NLP) and other technologies will provide the framework for Social Semantic Journalismto help journalists navigate the overwhelming amount of UGC for detecting known and unknown newsevents, verifying information and its sources, identifying eyewitnesses and contextualising the event andnews coverage journalists will be able to bring their professional expertise to this increasingly overwhelminginformation environment. This paper describes a framework of technologies that can be employed byjournalists and editors to realise Social Semantic Journalism

On the mutability of protocols

The task of developing a framework for which agents can communicate reliably and flexibly in open systems is not trivial. This thesis addresses the dichotomy between reliable communication and facilitation of the autonomy of agents to create more flexible and emergent interactions. By the introduction of adaptations to a distributed protocol language, agents benefit from the ability to communicate interaction protocols to elucidate the social norms (thus creating more reliable communication). Yet, this approach also provides the functionality for the agent to unilaterally introduce new paths for the conversation to explore unforeseen opportunities and options (thus restoring more autonomy than possible with static protocols). The foundation of this work is Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC). LCC is a distributed protocol language and framework in which agents coordinate their own interactions by their message passing activities. In order to ensure that adaptations to the protocols are done in a reasonable way, we examine the use of two models of communication to guide any transformations to the protocols. We describe the use of FIPA's ACL and ultimately its unsuitability for this approach as well as the more fecund task of implementing dialogue games, an model of argumentation, as dynamic protocols. The existing attempts to develop a model that can encompass the gulf between reliability and autonomy in communication have had varying degrees of success. It is the purpose and the result of the research described in this thesis to develop an alloy of the various models, by the introduction of dynamic and distributed protocols, to develop a framework stronger than its constituents. Though this is successful, the derivations of the protocols can be dificult to reconstruct. To this end, this thesis also describes a method of protocol synthesis inspired by models of human communication that can express the dialogues created by the previous approaches but also have a fully accountable path of construction. Not only does this thesis explore a unique and novel approach to agent communication, it is tested through a practical implementation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo