MultiAgent.com

This release marks the arrival of agent-based computing that finally allows Java developers to build industrial-strength distributed applications that are highly adaptive. It is the first time that Tryllian has made the ADK available to the public on an evaluation basis through download.

New features inlcude: an electronic marketplace application framework provided as a tutorial exercise "eMarkets"; an HTTP MTP (HTTP support for platform interoperability provided by QM-UL; specification compliance fixes from the FIPA Bake-Off meeting which validated FIPA-OS support for the FIPA Experimental specifications; thread Pooling in the TaskManager for reduced resource usage, and many memory usage optimisations.

*news*A CNN.com news piece on software agents on the Internet. It has quotes from many researchers and industry people involved in building agents. The article revolves around how challenging it is to build agents that know what information to present the user and what actions to take on behalf of the user. Oh, and there is a picture of Milind holding up is agent-enabled PDA.

*paper*A NY Times article about Dr. Larry Smarr and the California Institute of Telecommunications and nformation Technology, a new state-financed research academy in San Diego which Dr. Smarr directs. The Institute will build pervasive computing systems. The first one will be a traffic system with sensors/computers on all the highways, cars, traffic lights, etc., which will hopefully help lessen commute time for Californians. (Maybe, they should just telecommute instead :-)

*paper*An article that analyzes the growth and usage of Gnutella. It talks about the barrier that the system hit when average network traffic exceeded the bandwidth of a telephone modem. At this point modem users were no longer able to effectively participate in the network, creating a "dead-end" as a result. The paper also confirms the findings from Xerox PARC that came out a couple of months ago.

*paper*The initial revision of the Darpa Agent Markup Language Ontology was released in October 2000. "DAML is an effort to help bring the "semantic web" into being, focusing on the eventual creation of a web logic language. It represents joint work between DoD, industry and academia in both the US and the European Community and we hope it will lead to the eventual web standard in this area". It is written in RDF.

*news*In light of the current voting turmoil, I am posting this link to the Scientific AmericanMagazine FAQ page. It asks som of the leading mathematicians in the field what advances have been made in the development of fair voting systems. The Borda count is featured prominently, but not exclusively. After all, voting is a widely-used multiagent coordination technique.

*news*A USA Today article on the work being done by the eight-person electronic elves project at the Univ. of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. Each person has an agent (elf) that knows were its owner is (using GPS) and can schedule meetings for him with the other elves. Sounds really neat. You can also visit their <A HREF="http://www.isi.edu/teamcore/info.html">website</A>.

*news*They are a consortium for advancement of infrastructure standards for peer-to-peer computing, i.e., the sharing of computer resources and services by direct exchange. Their goal is to develop infrastructure standards to enable peer-to-peer computing everywhere. It is sponsored by Intel, and this <A HREF="http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/08/28/intel/">Salon article</A>tries to explain why Intel might be interested in peer-to-peer.

To be held 29 May - 1 June 2001 in Montreal Canada. Title pages due 9 October 2000. Papers due 16 October 2000.

*news*Well, not really a brain, more like a power grid. But, its a first step towards a world wide mind. A ZDNet article. "These companies suggest that peer-to-peer networking technologies will have a much greater influence on the Internet's infrastructure than file-sharing technologies like Napster and Gnutella have had. Napster may have shaken up the music industry, they say, but it's just kids' stuff compared with a system that instantly puts trillions of processor cycles at anyone's fingertips.".

Version 2.2 "the taste of the communitie's power"has been released. It includes integration of the HTTP-based MTP (Message Transport Protocol) and the XML-based ACLCodec, a bit-efficient ACLCodec, the support for managing remote agent platforms and the restructuring of the behaviours package with the inclusion of a Finite State Machine (FSM-based) Behaviour.

*paper* A web paper by Eytan Adar and Bernardo A. Huberman where they show how the Gnutella system is mostly composed of free-riders, leading to a "digital tragedy of the commons". Not a surprising results, but the details are interesting. I found this on slashdot which also carries the usual <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/21/1215256&mode=thread">discussion</A>.

*news* The International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (IJSEKE) will be publishing a special issue on "Multi-agent Systems and Mobile Agents". Papers are due 31 January 2001. There is also a special issue on <A HREF="http://www.unipi.gr/jass/voeca.htm">Virtual Organizations and E-commerce</A>from the Journal of Applied Systems Studies, papers due 1 November 2000.

*news*This is a Wired news article that talks about a proposed system for peer-to-peer filesharing which will incorporate the use of micropayments, down to one thounsand's of a cent, referral webs and a reputation system. The system, dubbed Mojo Nation software, is available at <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=8340">SourceForge</A>and is being developed by Autonomous Zone Industries, headed by Jim McCoy. "McCoy's goal is nothing if not ambitious: to create the first file-sharing economy of agents, servers, and search engines in which senders and receivers can agree on prices for each transaction and use micropayments to get paid".

*paper* As the article states "The fundamental idea behind Microsoft .NET is that the focus is shifting from individual Web sites or devices connected to the Internet, to constellations of computers, devices and services that work together"and it "will help drive a transformation in the Internet that will see HTML-based presentation augmented by programmable XML-based information. ". They are predicting many devices talking effectively to each other using XML. Is this a multiagent system?

*soft*FIPA-OS is the first open source standards-based intelligent agent framework, developed by Nortel Networks. The new version sports an automated installation process, Java 1.2, and reduced dependencies on third-party products.

*news*Thomas Wagner has announced that he expects to have so travel grants available for US students to travel and attend the European Agent School in Germany this summer. See the link below for details on how to apply. Hurry, the deadline is July 12, 2000!

*news*The Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems wants to publish short descriptions of Agent and Multiagent systems. If you want to write about your system, click below for more information on what you need to write and who to send it to.

*job*The ad says: "USC Information Sciences Institute invites applications from qualified individuals for a postdoctoral fellow/research associate position. This position is fully funded for two years, with a possibility of an extension for another two years. We are starting a project to study physics-based and other mathematical modeling of agent-based systems. Our interest is in understanding, designing and controlling collective behavior in a group of software and embodied agents."Sounds fun to me!

*paper* It has articles on "JAM: A BDI-theoretic Mobile Agent Architecture", "LARS: The Agent Platform for Business Applications", and "Towards an Online Distribution Structure?", plus project, conference, and workshop reports.

*soft*At the Agents 2000 conference they handed out a cdrom with a set of software demos and some papers in it. The cdrom was compiled by Josep Puyol-Gruart. I have not yet run many of them, but most of the ones I saw in the conference were very interesting. I could not find any agreement that prevented me from placing this cdrom on my website, so click below to see it. Notice that it is the actual cdrom, so seek-time is very slow.

*soft*MadKit is a modular and scalable agent platform. It provides generic agent facilities and allows high heterogeneity in agent architectures (from simulation systems to rule-based agents). Platform services are built as agents and thus can be customized or replaced easily.

*paper*An article from <A HREF="http://www.sdmagazine.com">Software Development magazine</A>about the differences between components and agents and how "Intelligent components that autonomously represent user's interests and communicate via XML are the answer to a fundamental e-commerce need: flexible, extensible systems.".

*soft*Bee-gent, a platform for mobile agents, has a new version out. I has a new version of the IPEditor which can make Interaction Protocols for Agent Wrappers as well as Mediation Agents, and makes the State Transition Chart and Message Sequence Chart become compliant to UML expression. It also includes bugfixes. Binaries are available free for non-commercial use.

*job*Unilever Research Port Sunlight is looking to recruit a postdoctoral fellow to work on agent based systems. The ideal candidate will have experience of one or more of the following: internet technology, collaboration via computer networks, complex adaptive systems or agent based systems. In addition they will good programming skills, and if possible be familiar with the Java programming language.

*paper* The issue includes papers on "Modeling Social Systems as Complex: Towards a Social Simulation Meta Model" and " Simulating Common Pool Resource Management Experiments with Adaptive Agents Employing Alternate Communication Routines" as well as a review, with 20 years hindsight, of Axelrod's "Evolution of Cooperation".

*job*"The Intelligent Systems Research (ISR) group at BT Labs (UK) is currently seeking applications for a number of internship positions for 6-month to one-year periods. The positions are suitable for candidates who are undertaking a PhD in Multi-Agent Systems, Soft Computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with an interest in developing industrial applications."This is BT Labs in the UK. Click below for the full ad.

*paper*An article titled "Agent-based software engineering" by Nick Jennings has just been published in the AI journal, click below to get it. "The standpoint of this analysis is the role of agent-based software in solving complex, real-world problems. In particular, it will be argued that the development of robust and scalable software systems requires autonomous agents that can complete their objectives while situated in a dynamic and uncertain environment, that can engage in rich, high-level social interactions, and that can operate within flexible organisational structures.". Update: May 8There is also a <A HREF="http://snrc.stanford.edu/~petrie/agents/abse/">talk</A>on this topic by Charles Petrie.

*paper* The Vol. 4, No. 2, March/April 2000 issue of Internet Computing is all about agents. Includes articles one e-commerce, a Domain Name eXchange, and JATLite. Only subscribers can see the online content.

*paper*A Wired magazine article on how shopbots will change the economy: "Think beyond ecommerce: A new school of researchers envisions an economic revolution that will usher in a 24/7 global marketplace of true fluid markets, real dynamic pricing, and kick-ass shopbots". Featuring Jeff Kephart and some of his colleages from the IBM <A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/iac/">Institute for Advanced Commerce</A>.

*soft*Massyve Kit version 2.0 represents an evolution of version 1.0, announced in July 99. In general, its main new features are: the agents can run in distributed machines; new reference architectures can be designed; and the user can make some experiments with the notion of mobile agents. Besides that, some bugs of version 1.0 have been fixed as well as the user/programmer manual contains more detailed information on how to derive a particular system. Its available for free for non-commercial use.

*soft*The Ronin Agent Framework is a Jini-based distributed agent development framework. Ronin is designed to aid in the development of highly demanded "intelligent" distributed applications. Ronin introduces a hybrid architecture, a composition of agent-oriented and service-oriented architecture, for deploying dynamic distributed systems

*hard*TeamBots is a Java-based collection of application programs and Java packages for multiagent mobile robotics research. The TeamBots distribution is a full source-code release. The control systems you build with it can be used in the included simulator and in real robots such as the Nomad 150.

*job*This is a competition sponsored by FIPA which will award $10000 to the best application using FIPA agents. Entries will be judged by the FIPA member companies. The main criterion is the level of interest and completeness of the application.

*news* ICMAS 2000 will feature this trading agent competition where agents submitted by the participants will try to outsmart each other in a market game. Each agent will try to purchase a "vacation package" for some number of customers which maximizes their utility functions. The packages include items such as: airfare, hotel reservations, baseball tickets, etc.

*soft*MIT Media LabA Java software platform for creating distributed applications. Using Hive, programmers can easily create systems that connect and use data from all over the Internet. At its heart, Hive is an environment for distributed agents to live, communicating and moving to fulfill applications. It has been released under the GPL.

Other sources of information.

DAI-list: *cool*The Distributed Artificial Intelligence List, still one of the most informative.
AgentList: *cool*The Software Agents Mailing list. General information on agents.
AgentLink Newsletter: The aim of the AgentLink newsletter is to provide a relatively informal way of communicating both what's happening in AgentLink, but also what's happening in the agent world generally.
AgentNews webletter: A weekly newletter from the UMBC AgentWeb. It includes news and new developments on agents.
MAAMAW: Modeling an Autonomous Agent in a Multi-Agent World.
EcTechNews: A newsletter from the UMBC Institute for global electronic commerce. It covers e-commerce, and sometimes talks about the impact of agents on e-commerce.
BotTechnology Free Newsletter: Keep up to date on BotTechnology.com, Inc. latest research and development activities by subscribing to its free email corporate newsletter.
BotSpot: The spot for bots!
Computists International: Publishers of Computist's Weekly, a general interest AI news publication.
Diversity in Agent Organizations: *paper*This paper discussess organization design in multiagent systems. It appeared on Object Magazinein April 1998 but its news to me, so Im placing it here. Its written by Daniel Corkill and Susan Lander.
ScienceDaily Magazine: General research news. Mostly press releases issued by research labs.

A Wired article on the future of energy distribution. "the digital networks will be called upon to remake the grid in their own image. By embedding sensors, solid-state controllers, and intelligent agents throughout this new supply chain, the meter and the monthly bill will be swapped out for something more robust, adaptive, interconnected, and alive: a humming, real-time, interactive energy marketplace."Appears in the July 2001 issue.

A short Computerworld article on multiagent systems. It lacks any real substance but, hey, its good publicity. "Like ants that repair their nest if it's disturbed and columns of ants that route around obstructions, these systems adapt to unanticipated problems in a way that ordinary centralized systems can't.".Well, at least that is the goal.

A wired news article on the upcoming (Aug.2-10) Robocup competition. "This isn't just about soccer, said RoboCup's Japanese founder and president, Hiroaki Kitano. The greater goal is to: "apply technologies created by the project for significant social andindustrial issues".

A short news piece on the future of trading agents with quotes from Mike Wellman.

Will be held at the University of Southern California. It is sponsored by the International Foundation on Multiagent Systems. The school will mainly consist of one week of tutorials delivered by relevant world leaders in the topic. Registration due 1 December 2001. To be held 7-14 January 2001.

The University of Southern California School of Engineering has received a grant to create swarms of microscopic robots to monitor potentially dangerous microorganisms in the ocean. "But we'll need algorithms to coordinate a million or more robots. That is a daunting problem, and we must start laying out the foundations for large numbers of robots long before they are a reality".

"People linking their brains together to form a global collective intelligence. Humans living well beyond 100 years. Computers uploading aspects of our personalities to a network. These could all happen this century with the proper investments in technology, according to a recent report from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce."The article contains a pointer to the original report.

Bids are solicited to host the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). The AAMAS Steering Committee now invites bids for hosting AAMAS 2004. AAMAS 2004 will be held at a location in the Americas, at a date to be determined in consultation with the successful bid team, in June or July 2004. Based on past experience and trends we expect the attendance of AAMAS2004 to be between 500 and 800 people.S) in 2004.

DAML-S is a DAML+OIL-based Web service ontology, which supplies Web service providers with a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of their Web services in unambiguous, computer-intepretable form. Version 0.7 introduces the Grounding ontology, and also includes substantial refinements to the Profile and Process Model ontologies. In addition, a new example of a Profile-based (yellow-pages style) service taxonomy is presented, and the existing service examples have been made more complete.

Fed up with them hanging around the lab? So set them free and enter one of the biggest Agent Technology competitions of the year! -- steal the glory for the most innovative Agent applications, tools and infrastructure - the competition is open to anybody worldwide developing agent systems relevant to deployment in Open Environments and particular in the agentcities network. Deadline 15 November 2002.

"What's the connection between Wi-Fi wireless networks, Weblogs and Web services? They are among the few technologies thriving amid the industrywide downturn. What's more, they are examples of the trend toward decentralization.In the coming decade, decentralization will be the critical challenge for the technology, media and telecommunications industries."An article from ZDnet.

A ZDNet article. " An oft-cited benefit of the Semantic Web is a world where intelligent agents take English-like instructions from users and cruise the Internet reading metadata to produce optimum results. But doubters say that the monstrous overhead of ontology development alone could knock the Semantic Web into the dustbin of nice-but-impractical ideas".

Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) proposed the smart-dust concept four years ago. The idea was to sprinkle thousands of tiny wireless sensors on a battlefield to monitor enemy movements without alerting the enemy to their presence. By self-organizing into a sensor network, smart dust would filter raw data for relevance before relaying only the important findings to central command. At this stage, there are over 100 groups around the world that are using the combination of our open-source Motes with the TinyOS and TinyDB.

"P&G's use of agent-based modeling helped it transform its supply chain system so fundamentally that the company no longer even calls it a supply chain. The Cincinnati-based maker of Tide, Crest, Pringles, Pampers, Clairol and 300 other products now calls its connections to 5 billion consumers in 140 countries a supply network."A Computerworld article.

"The big issue is this: if I am letting a decentralized, self-organizing system take over, say, my computer network, how should I program the individual virtual ants so that the network behaves appropriately at the system-wide level?"A big problem, indeed.

USC ISI's teamcore research group is focused on research on multiagent systems, where multiple agents (including software agents, robots and people) may interact. Our work has typically focused on situations where such interactions are collaborative, often in the form of agent teams. They have an opening for a postdoc position.

The International Foundation for Multiagent Systems (IFMAS) invites proposals for Agents and Multiagent Systems Schools from countries or regions that have been traditionally under-represented in the AAMAS conferences (AAMAS -- International Joint Conference on Agents and Multiagent Systems). The intent is to encourage further participation of researchers from such countries in AAMAS, and to foster research in agents and multiagent systems. Attendees at such schools may be graduate students and established researchers, or from industry.

The AAMAS Steering Committee now invites bids for hosting AAMAS 2005.AAMAS 2005 will be held at a date to be determined in consultation with the successful bid team, in June or July 2005.

ACM SIGART, in collaboration with the International Conference onAutonomous Agents, has instituted an annual award for excellence inresearch in the area of autonomous agents. Award winners will receivean honorarium and will be invited to give a presentation at the annualAutonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) Conference.

The candidate must meet minimum requirements for admission to the EECS Department's PhD program inlcuding completion of a masters degree or a bachelors degree in a related discipline with at least a 3.3/4 GPA and research experience.Academic background and/or strong interest in social science research is desirable for work on Social Simulation and Cognitive Science projects.

This release adds survivable yellow pages and white pages services, and multiple other performance and reliability improvements. As always, all source code is available via anonymous CVS.

This is the promise of the Semantic Web -- it will improve all the areas of your life where you currently use syllogisms. Which is to say, almost nowhere.

A short interview of Tuomas Sandholm by Computerworld magazine. Tuomas talks about combinatorial auctions, mechanism design, and voting.

Version 2.3 is out. It includes support for the construction of agents written in .NET languages (C# and Visual Basic) , support for the Macintosh, and a greatly improved invocation management agent.

The selection committee for the SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award is pleased to announce that Dr. Makoto Yokoo of the NTT Communication Science Laboratories is the recipient of the 2004 award. Dr. Yokoo has made significant and sustained contributions to the research on autonomous agents and multi agent systems. In particular, Dr. Yokoo made seminal contributions to the area of distributed constraint satisfaction, which has become a flourishing research area in multiagent systems.

This link offers a discussion into the use of hyphens, with some special notes on the multi- prefix. It seems that both usages are accepted but contemporary usage favors dropping the hyphen, as in: multinational, multiuser, and multimedia. But, remember that "If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad." (Oxford University Press style manual).

MultiAgent.com

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