Developing Intelligent Agent Systems


Book Description

Build your own intelligent agent system... Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computer science that can be used to engineer complex computer programmes that behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments. Applications range from small programmes that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. This powerful technology is not widely used, however, as developing intelligent agent software requires high levels of training and skill. The authors of this book have developed and tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agent systems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developers can start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily from scratch saving valuable time and resources. Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers the questions “what are agents?” and “why are they useful?” but also the crucial question: “how do I design and build intelligent agent systems?” The book covers everything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively use this technology - including an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology. Read on for: a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and building intelligent agent systems. a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agent systems covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agents. PDT: Prometheus Design Tool – software support for the Prometheus design process. the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the design process throughout the book. Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT), can be found at: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheus This book is aimed at industrial software developers, software engineers and at advanced undergraduate students. It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.




Developing Intelligent Agents for Distributed Systems


Book Description

Now professional software developers working in highly complex distributed environments can learn how to create agents for client/server environments. This book clearly explains the programming of agents for improving user interfaces, for improving performance and usability of LANS and WANS, for managing mail, and even for assisting in the development of other software.




Building Intelligent Agents


Book Description

Building Intelligent Agents is unique in its comprehensive coverage of the subject. The first part of the book presents an original theory for building intelligent agents and a methodology and tool that implement the theory. The second part of the book presents complex and detailed case studies of building different types of agents: an educational assessment agent, a statistical analysis assessment and support agent, an engineering design assistant, and a virtual military commander. Also featured in this book is Disciple, a toolkit for building interactive agents which function in much the same way as a human apprentice. Disciple-based agents can reason both with incomplete information, but also with information that is potentially incorrect. This approach, in which the agent learns its behavior from its teacher, integrates many machine learning and knowledge acquisition techniques, taking advantage of their complementary strengths to compensate for each others weakness. As a consequence, it significantly reduces (or even eliminates) the involvement of a knowledge engineer in the process of building an intelligent agent.




Multi-Agent Systems for Concurrent Intelligent Design and Manufacturing


Book Description

Agent Technology, or Agent-Based Approaches, is a new paradigm for developing software applications. It has been hailed as 'the next significant breakthrough in software development', and 'the new revolution in software' after object technology or object-oriented programming. In this context, an agent is a computer system which is capable of act




Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE


Book Description

Learn how to employ JADE to build multi-agent systems! JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment framework) is a middleware for the development of applications, both in the mobile and fixed environment, based on the Peer-to-Peer intelligent autonomous agent approach. JADE enables developers to implement and deploy multi-agent systems, including agents running on wireless networks and limited-resource devices. Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE is a practical guide to using JADE. The text will give an introduction to agent technologies and the JADE Platform, before proceeding to give a comprehensive guide to programming with JADE. Basic features such as creating agents, agent tasks, agent communication, agent discovery and GUIs are covered, as well as more advanced features including ontologies and content languages, complex behaviours, interaction protocols, agent mobility, and the in-process interface. Issues such as JADE internals, running JADE agents on mobile devices, deploying a fault tolerant JADE platform, and main add-ons are also covered in depth. Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE: Comprehensive guide to using JADE to build multi-agent systems and agent orientated programming. Describes and explains ontologies and content language, interaction protocols and complex behaviour. Includes material on persistence, security and a semantics framework. Contains numerous examples, problems, and illustrations to enhance learning. Presents a case study demonstrating the use of JADE in practice. Offers an accompanying website with additional learning resources such as sample code, exercises and PPT-slides. This invaluable resource will provide multi-agent systems practitioners, programmers working in the software industry with an interest on multi-agent systems as well as final year undergraduate and postgraduate students in CS and advanced networking and telecoms courses with a comprehensive guide to using JADE to employ multi agent systems. With contributions from experts in JADE and multi agent technology.




Intelligent Agent Technology


Book Description

This volume is an attempt to capture the essence of the state-of-the-art of intelligent agent technology and to identify the new challenges and opportunities that it is or will be facing. The most important feature of the volume is that it emphasizes a multi-faceted, holistic view of this emerging technology, from its computational foundations OCo in terms of models, methodologies, and tools for developing a variety of embodiments of agent-based systems OCo to its practical impact on tackling real-world problems. Contents: Formal Agent Theories; Computational Architecture and Infrastructure; Learning and Adaptation; Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Agents; Distributed Intelligence; Agent Based Applications. Readership: Graduate students in computer science and engineering, academics/lecturers, researchers, software/systems engineers, IT engineers and industrialists."




An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems


Book Description

The study of multi-agent systems (MAS) focuses on systems in which many intelligent agents interact with each other. These agents are considered to be autonomous entities such as software programs or robots. Their interactions can either be cooperative (for example as in an ant colony) or selfish (as in a free market economy). This book assumes only basic knowledge of algorithms and discrete maths, both of which are taught as standard in the first or second year of computer science degree programmes. A basic knowledge of artificial intelligence would useful to help understand some of the issues, but is not essential. The book’s main aims are: To introduce the student to the concept of agents and multi-agent systems, and the main applications for which they are appropriate To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of intelligent agents To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of a multi-agent society To introduce a number of typical applications for agent technology After reading the book the student should understand: The notion of an agent, how agents are distinct from other software paradigms (e.g. objects) and the characteristics of applications that lend themselves to agent-oriented software The key issues associated with constructing agents capable of intelligent autonomous action and the main approaches taken to developing such agents The key issues in designing societies of agents that can effectively cooperate in order to solve problems, including an understanding of the key types of multi-agent interactions possible in such systems The main application areas of agent-based systems




Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies


Book Description

Intelligent agent technology is emerging as one of the most important and rapidly advancing areas. Researchers are developing a number of agent-based applications and multi-agent systems in a variety of fields, such as: electronic commerce, supply chain management, resource allocation, intelligent manufacturing, mass customization, industrial control, information retrieval and filtering, collaborative work, mobile commerce, decision support, and computer games. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies presents an outstanding collection of the latest research associated with intelligent agents and information technologies. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies provides a comprehensive analysis of issues related to agent design, implementation, integration, deployment, evaluation, and business value. This book presents research results and application of agents and other intelligent information technologies in various domains. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies offers the intelligent information technologies that will potentially revolutionize the work environment as well as social computing.







Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents


Book Description

Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents reports on the most recent advances in agent technologies for distributed learning. Chapters are devoted to the various aspects of intelligent software agents in distributed learning, including the methodological and technical issues on where and how intelligent agents can contribute to meeting distributed learning needs today and tomorrow. This book benefits the AI (artificial intelligence) and educational communities in their research and development, offering new and interesting research issues surrounding the development of distributed learning environments in the Semantic Web age. In addition, the ideas presented in the book are applicable to other domains such as Agent-Supported Web Services, distributed business process and resource integration, computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) and e-Commerce.