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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Concurrent Multiple- Issue Negotiation For Internet-Based Services, Jiangbo Dang, Michael N. Huhns
Concurrent Multiple- Issue Negotiation For Internet-Based Services, Jiangbo Dang, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Negotiation is a technique for reaching a mutually beneficial agreement among autonomous entities. In an Internet-based services context, multiple entities are negotiating simultaneously. The concurrent negotiation protocol extends existing negotiation protocols, letting both service requestors and service providers manage several negotiation processes in parallel. Colored Petri nets, which have greater expressive power than finite state machines and offer support for concurrency, represent the negotiation protocol and facilitate the analysis of desirable properties.
Research Directions For Service-Oriented Multiagent Systems, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh, Mark Burstein, Keith Decker, Edmund Durfee, Tim Finin, Les Gasser, Hrishikesh Goradia, Nick Jennings, Kiran Lakkaraju, Hideyuki Nakashima, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein, Alicia Ruvinsky, Gita Sukthankar, Samarth Swarup, Katia Sycara, Milind Tambe, Tom Wagner, Laura Zavala, Mas Research Roadmap Project
Research Directions For Service-Oriented Multiagent Systems, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh, Mark Burstein, Keith Decker, Edmund Durfee, Tim Finin, Les Gasser, Hrishikesh Goradia, Nick Jennings, Kiran Lakkaraju, Hideyuki Nakashima, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein, Alicia Ruvinsky, Gita Sukthankar, Samarth Swarup, Katia Sycara, Milind Tambe, Tom Wagner, Laura Zavala, Mas Research Roadmap Project
Faculty Publications
Today's service-oriented systems realize many ideas from the research conducted a decade or so ago in multiagent systems. Because these two fields are so deeply connected, further advances in multiagent systems could feed into tomorrow's successful service-oriented computing approaches. This article describes a 15-year roadmap for service-oriented multiagent system research.
Service-Oriented Computing: Key Concepts And Principles, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Service-Oriented Computing: Key Concepts And Principles, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
Traditional approaches to software development - the ones embodied in CASE tools and modeling frameworks - are appropriate for building individual software components, but they are not designed to face the challenges of open environments. Service-oriented computing provides a way to create a new architecture that reflects components' trends toward autonomy and heterogeneity. We thus emphasize SOC concepts instead of how to deploy Web services in accord with current standards. To begin the series, we describe the key concepts and abstractions of SOC and the elements of a corresponding engineering methodology.
Multiagent Systems With Workflows, José M. Vidal, Paul A. Buhler, Christian Stahl
Multiagent Systems With Workflows, José M. Vidal, Paul A. Buhler, Christian Stahl
Faculty Publications
Industry and researchers have two different visions for the future of Web services. Industry wants to capitalize on Web service technology to automate business processes via centralized workflow enactment. Researchers are interested in the dynamic composition of Web services. We show how these two visions are points in a continuum and discuss a possible path for bridging the gap between them.
The Zen Of The Web, Jeff Heflin, Michael N. Huhns
The Zen Of The Web, Jeff Heflin, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Massive Deliberation, William H. Turkett Jr., John R. Rose, Michael N. Huhns
Massive Deliberation, William H. Turkett Jr., John R. Rose, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Agents are proliferating on the Web, making it conceivable that their collective reasoning ability might someday be harnessed for robust decision-making. The hope is that massive deliberation power can soon help solve problems that require knowledge, reasoning, and intelligence. Until recently, working individually or in small groups, agents across the Web could barely communicate and could only reason under conditions of severely bounded rationality. Projects such as Agentcities showed that widespread heterogeneous agents could collaborate on specific predefined tasks and provide diverse agent-based services. When the tasks are dynamic, of long duration, and ill defined, however, success requires planning that …
The Sentient Web, Michael N. Huhns
The Sentient Web, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
In a startling revelation, a team of university scientists has reported that a network of computers has become conscious and sentient, and is beginning to assume control of online information system. In spite of the ominous tone typically chosen for dramatic effect, a sentient Web would be more helpful and much easier for people to use. An agent is an active, persistent software component that perceives, reasons, and acts, and whose actions include communication. Agents inherently take intentional actions based on sensory information and memories of past actions. All agents have necessary communication ability, but they do not necessarily possess …
Trusted Autonomy, Michael N. Huhns, Duncan A. Buell
Trusted Autonomy, Michael N. Huhns, Duncan A. Buell
Faculty Publications
We describe how agents are the right building blocks for constructing trustworthy systems. Robust software and trusted autonomy represent the future for agent technology and software engineering.
Agents As Web Services, Michael N. Huhns
Agents As Web Services, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Web services are extremely flexible. Most advantageously, a developer of Web services need not know who or what will use the services being provided. The paper discusses current standards for Web services, directory services and the Semantic Web. It considers how agents extend Web services in several important ways.
Making Agents Secure On The Semantic Web, Csilla Farkas, Michael N. Huhns
Making Agents Secure On The Semantic Web, Csilla Farkas, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Agents were designed to collaborate and share information. While highly desirable for interoperability, this feature is scary from the security perspective. Illegal inferences, supported by semantic Web technology and ontologies, might enable users to access unauthorized information. In addition to semantic associations and replicated data with different sensitivity, malicious agents could also exploit statistical inferences. Although each agent in a system might behave in a desired and secure way, their combined knowledge could be used to disclose sensitive data. The research community must therefore develop and implement techniques that allow control over released data. To answer the questions related to …
Weaving A Computing Fabric, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens, John W. Keele, Jim E. Wray, Warren M. Snelling, Greg P. Harhay, Randy R. Bradley
Weaving A Computing Fabric, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens, John W. Keele, Jim E. Wray, Warren M. Snelling, Greg P. Harhay, Randy R. Bradley
Faculty Publications
As sources of information relevant to a particular domain proliferate, we need a methodology for locating, aggregating, relating, fusing, reconciling, and presenting information to users. Interoperability thus must occur not only among the information, but also among the different software applications that process it. Given the large number of potential sources and applications, interoperability becomes an extremely large problem for which manual solutions are impractical. A combination of software agents and ontologies can supply the necessary methodology for interoperability.
Inside An Agent, José M. Vidal, Paul A. Buhler, Michael N. Huhns
Inside An Agent, José M. Vidal, Paul A. Buhler, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
When we discuss agent-based system construction with software developers or ask students to implement common agent architectures using object-oriented techniques, we find that it is not trivial for them to create an elegant system design from the standard presentation of these architectures in textbooks or research papers. To better communicate our interpretation of popular agent architectures, we draw UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams to guide an implementer's design. However, before we describe these diagrams, we need to review some basic features of agents. The paper considers an architecture showing a simple agent interacting with an environment. The agent senses its …
Automating Supply Chains, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Automating Supply Chains, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Faculty Publications
A recent study found that supply-chain problems cost companies between 9 and 20 percent of their value over a six-month period (T.J. Becker, 2000). The problems range from part shortages to poorly utilized plant capacity. When you place this in the context of the overall business-to-business (B2B) market expected to reach US$7 trillion by 2004 (37 percent of which is projected to be e-commerce sales), it is easy to see that effective supply-chain management (SCM) tools could save companies billions of dollars. Attempts to automate solutions to these problems are complicated by the need for the different companies in a …
The Emergence Of Language Among Autonomous Agents, Piotr Gmytrasiewicz, Michael N. Huhns
The Emergence Of Language Among Autonomous Agents, Piotr Gmytrasiewicz, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Suppose some autonomous shopbot agents had been representing us by dealing with a vendor's pricebot, and suppose they didn't share an agent communication language (ACL). What should they know at a fundamental level, what could each point to, and how could they establish a common language? Recent research at the University of Texas at Arlington has shown that agents first establish a common vocabulary, progress to a primitive language similar to human pidgin, then enrich the language's grammar to develop a creole, and eventually arrive at a full-blown ACL. During this process, the vocabulary and grammatical structures most important to …
Sensors + Agents + Networks = Aware Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Sreenath Seshadri
Sensors + Agents + Networks = Aware Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Sreenath Seshadri
Faculty Publications
Software agents are being deployed in increasing numbers to help users find and manage information, particularly in open environments such as the Internet. For the most part, they operate independently and are typically designed to be aware only of their users and the environment in which they perform their tasks. Thus, they fail to take advantage of each other's abilities or results. For example, a shopping agent might periodically access several online databases to find the best price for a music CD and then purchase it if the price falls below its user's threshold. Other agents might be tracking prices …
Agent Teams: Building And Implementing Software, Michael N. Huhns
Agent Teams: Building And Implementing Software, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Agents will become fundamental building blocks for general-purpose Internet-based software. The software may not display any explicitly agent-like characteristics, but it will exhibit the benefits of tolerance to errors, ease of maintenance, adaptability to change, and speed of construction that agents provide. Moreover, an agent-based approach to software development can lead to new types of software solutions that might not otherwise be obvious. The author considers how an approach based on teams of active, cooperative, and persistent software components, that is agents, shows special promise in enabling the rapid construction of robust and reusable software.
Personal Ontologies, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Personal Ontologies, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Faculty Publications
Corporations can suffer from too much information, and it is often inaccessible, inconsistent, and incomprehensible. The corporate solution entails knowledge management techniques and data warehouses. The paper discusses the use of the personal ontology. The promising approach is an organization scheme based on a model of an office and its information, an ontology, coupled with the proper tools for using it.
Exploiting Expertise Through Knowledge Networks, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Exploiting Expertise Through Knowledge Networks, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens
Faculty Publications
The paper discusses the necessary capabilities of knowledge networks: categorizing (the ability to classify Web pages and other unstructured data automatically); hyperlinking (the ability to add to each item of information appropriate pointers to other relevant items of information); alerting (the automatic notification of users and agents to new information that might be of interest to them); and profiling (the construction of models of users and agents to describe their interests and expertise).
Negotiating For Goods And Services, Michael N. Huhns, Anuj K. Malhotra
Negotiating For Goods And Services, Michael N. Huhns, Anuj K. Malhotra
Faculty Publications
Can a negotiation protocol be both fair and “envy-free” when more than two agents are involved? The authors consider how envy-free apportioning is more difficult than fair apportioning, but both can help to manage critical resources. They discuss an envy-free protocol and agent-based Web auctions.
Benevolent Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Abdulla Mohamed
Benevolent Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Abdulla Mohamed
Faculty Publications
Some agents roaming the Web these days are benevolent-for example, they may clean up stalled or failed database transactions, or share query results that may have cost substantial resources to acquire and might consume more to share. The Agent Behavior Testbed is a tool for studying the economics of agent altruism. As more agents hit the Internet, benevolence and cooperation will help with overall efficiency and productivity. The paper discusses benevolent agents on the Web.
Personal Assistants, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Personal Assistants, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
Already there are simple personal agents to help with some of our shopping. There are agents to track stocks in our portfolios, advise us on how to use particular software products, and arrange meetings within corporate workgroups. However, none of these agents takes more than one aspect of our activities into account, nor do they adapt easily to our preferences. Personal assistants, on the other hand, are agents that can represent individuals on the Web. They help users in their day-to-day activities, especially those involving information retrieval, negotiation, or coordination. A personal assistant might schedule a meeting and then, based …
Anthropoid Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Anthropoid Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
In the study of agents on the Internet, we often ascribe to them human qualities, such as beliefs and intentions. These qualities are best understood as metaphors that give developers a way to talk about and design the capabilities and applications of agents. Despite all the progress in computing, users have been slow to accept the technology. They have often accepted what was thrown at them, but only under economic duress. Bringing the technology closer to their emotional needs might ease this resistance. So how can we put a human face on computing? Maybe by putting an animated face on …
Internet-Based Agents: Applications And Infrastructure, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns
Internet-Based Agents: Applications And Infrastructure, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns
Faculty Publications
Software agents are mitigating the complexity of modern information systems—technically by providing a locus for managing information subsets, and psychologically by providing an abstraction for human interaction with them.
The Agent Test, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
The Agent Test, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
The authors consider agents on the World Wide Web, including information retrieval agents. They propose a test for agenthood, involving communication in multi-agent systems.
Ontologies For Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Ontologies For Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
An ontology is a computational model of some portion of the world. It is often captured in some form of a semantic network-a graph whose nodes are concepts or individual objects and whose arcs represent relationships or associations among the concepts. This network is augmented by properties and attributes, constraints, functions, and rules that govern the behavior of the concepts. Formally, an ontology is an agreement about a shared conceptualization, which includes frameworks for modeling domain knowledge and agreements about the representation of particular domain theories. Definitions associate the names of entities in a universe of discourse (for example, classes, …
Mobile Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Mobile Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh
Faculty Publications
A lot of agents are executing on the Web, and some of them are starting to move around. While most agents are static (existing as a single process or thread on one host), others can pick up and move their code and data to a new host where they resume executing.