Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw Bob Carpenter Rob Cranfill Mark Greaves Heather Holmback Renia Jeffers Luis Poblete Amy Sun
Applied Research and Technology Shared Services Group The Boeing Company jeffrey.m.bradshaw@boeing.com
Original agent work instigated by researchers studying distributed intelligence New wave of agent research motivated by two practical concerns: Overcoming the limitations of current user interface approaches Simplifying the complexities of distributed computing Though each of these problems can be solved in other ways, the aggregate advantage of agent technology is that it can address both of them at once: by supplementing direct manipulation with indirect management approaches by building in high-level, loosely-coupled collaborative capabilities out of the box
Ad hoc
Encapsulated
Agents are software entities that function continuously and autonomously in a particular environment that is often inhabited by other agents and processes Ideally a software agent should be able to: carry out activities without requiring constant human guidance learn from its experience communicate and collaborate with people and other agents move from place to place over a network as necessary
Autonomous
Adaptive
Cooperative
Note: Agents can be either static or mobile, depending on bandwidth requirements, data vs. program size, communication latency, and network stability
(Dyer, DARPA CoABS)
State-defining parameters
unconstrained
mail filtering meeting scheduling intelligent assistance training and performance support
Information access
retrieval, filtering, and integration from multiple sources Internet, intranet, extranet fair allocation of limited computing resources dynamic rerouting and reassignment of tasks
Resource brokering
intelligent integration and presentation to suit the task dynamic configuration according to resource availability and platform constraints
Intelligent collaboration
Architecture appropriate for a wide variety of domains and operating environments Hardware-, operating-system-, programming-languageindependent Separability of message and transport layers Foundation of distributed-object/middleware (e.g.,CORBA, DCOM) and Internet technologies Fits well into component integration architectures (e.g., ActiveX, JavaBeans, Web browsers) Principled extensibility of agent-to-agent protocol Designed to work with other agent architectures, and to allow easy agentification of existing software Must be able to incorporate agent interoperability standards as they evolve
T
SGML/XML Component
Agents CORBA
Web and other Internet services Link Servers Object Request Broker Component tools and services Fine-grained data objects
Agent Structure
Knowledge Facts Beliefs Desires Intentions Capabilities
Death
Cryogenic State
Transport-Level Communication
Generic Agent
Agent B
The Domain Manager: Controls entry/exit of agents within a domain, governs proxy agents (i.e., security) Maintains a set of properties on behalf of the domain administrator Provides the address of the Matchmaker to agents within its domain (i.e., naming) The Matchmaker: Helps clients find information about the location of agents that have advertised their services Forwards requests to Matchmakers in other domains as appropriate Can be built on top of native distributed object system services (e.g., trader) Agents Providing Services: Advertise their services to the Matchmaker Are notified by the Matchmaker if their services have been registered Withdraw their services when they no longer wish to provide them Agents Requesting Services Ask the Matchmaker to recommend agents that match certain criteria Are given unique identifiers for the agents that match the criteria Communicate directly with these agents for services
Mediation Extension
GA
Proxy Extension
GA
GA
Matchmaker Extension
GA
GA
GA = Generic Agent
Conversations
Social interaction is more appropriately modeled when conversations rather than isolated illocutionary acts are taken as the fundamental unit of discourse Two approaches to implementing agent conversations (Walker and Wooldridge):
off-line design: social laws are hard-wired in advance emergence: conventions develop from within a group of agents
KAoS currently provides only for off-line design of conversations, represented as state-transition networks
Shared knowledge about message sequencing conventions enables agents to coordinate frequently recurring interactions of a routine nature simply and predictably. Cohen and Smiths semantics and joint intention theory have been used to analyze KAoS conversation policies In the future, more sophisticated agents will either be able to use less constraining landmark-based conversation policies or fall back to more rigid policies with identical semantics to communicate with simpler agents In support of this, DARPA is funding us to develop a ConversationDesign Tool (CDT)
Interaction among agents best modeled at the conversational level, rather than isolated speech acts Conversation policies are agent dialogue building-blocks that provide a set of constraints that define and restrict what can take place in individual agent conversations
Policies can be expressed via many different representation formalisms, from regular expression grammars to dynamic logics
Conversation policies ensure reliable communication among heterogeneous agents while lessening agents burden of inference
Agents choose between a greatly reduced number of possible conversational moves Conversation manager (component of generic agent) assures compliance with policy; handles exceptions
References: http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~jbradsha/
Communication about commitments (promise, renege) is handled explicitly, and A can notify B when the request was not fulfilled to its satisfaction (decline report) See formal analysis of Conversation for Action Policy in Smith and Cohen 1996 AAAI paper
KAoS Applications
DIG-IT: Boeing digital data integration effort to integrate agents in next-generation PMA and BOLD NASA Aviation Extranet: Agent-assisted access to information and services over a large-scale virtual private network AHCPR CDSS Project: Long-term follow-up support for bone marrow transplant patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center DARPA Jumpstart Project: Development of agent design toolkit (Boeing, UWF Cognition Institute, Sun Microsystems, IntelliTek) Agents for space applications: Proposal to use KAoS for a multi-agent testbed in satellite operations, and in the development of a Personal Satellite Assistant (in preparation)
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Partners: Boeing , Sun, UWF, IntelliTek Collaborator: Oregon Graduate Institute (CHCC) Deliverables:
Prototype software (CDT and SDT) Periodic technical reports and demos Interoperability demos with other CoABS participants
Simple agent systems may require only simple models of communication to achieve their ends
Limited tasks, collaborations, interactions with one another Predictable all simple-agent universe of action Limited and domain-specific reasoning requirements Conversations are atomic transactions
Example:
Simple personal information retrieval agents
interact mainly with non-agent information sources little negotiation or bargaining
Examples:
Electronic Commerce/Electronic Trading, Air Traffic Control, Health Care, Military, etc.
This requires a sophisticated multiagent communication model, e.g., conversations, with an explicit semantic foundation.
Mixture of different agent frameworks Mixture of simple and sophisticated agents Approach: shared conversation and security policies, generated off-line, that increase interoperability and robustness in heterogeneous agent environments
Help developers design reliable systems with desired agent security characteristics
Develop foundations for agent security and mobility standards Provide prototype security design tool (SDT) allowing agent developers to easily select, specialize or generate appropriate agent security policies
Intelligent agents can use less constraining plan-based policies that give them flexibility of determining many specifics of conversational moves on-the-fly Constraints governing plan-based conversation policies make them less complicated to implement than unrestricted agent dialogue models Simpler agents will continue to rely on more rigidly defined FSM-based policies where the universe of possible moves has been pre-computed off-line FSM and plan-based versions of same policy must comply to same semantics and pragmatics Appropriate version can be negotiated between agents at runtime
Extending Semantics/Pragmatics
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FSM and landmark models of same policy must comply to same semantics and pragmatics; choice of model negotiated at runtime between agents We will also investigate other pragmatic conditions imposed by context (e.g., meta-conditions on agent conversations)
The CDT is a formal design and verification system for a given theory of agency and ACL Stanfords OpenProof will be the core framework
OpenProof is a component-based (JavaBeans) formal heterogeneous reasoning environment
Allows development of various representations (sentences, reasoning trees, FSMs, Dooley graphs, Petri nets, etc.) Logical fragments (deductive rules, theorem-provers) Heterogeneous transfer rules
Java is currently the most popular and arguably the most security-conscious mainstream language for agent development Its cross-platform nature makes it well-suited for heterogeneous environments However Java 1.0-1.1 failed to address many of the challenges posed by agent software
All or nothing philosophy in sandbox Lack of fine-grained resource control Security policy implementation requires writing your own security manager Applet mechanisms are insufficient for autonomous agent mobility
Mechanisms for increasing configurability, extensibility, and fine-grained access control are under development at Sun Microsystems Java 1.2 enhancements
Applets and applications on equivalent security footings Finer-grained configurability and better resource control Specification of much of the security policy via an external policy file, thus separating policy from mechanism
These new developments provide an initial foundation for support of agent-unique requirements
Accelerate incorporation of required agent security and mobility features into the Java platform
Foundation of new Java security model + changes to Java VM Work with vendors, developers, standards organizations
SDT Benefits
Configurable starter set of agent security policies Interoperability among different agent frameworks (grid security dial?) Faster creation of robust agents by non-experts
Anytime Mobility
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Telescript provided completely transparent agent mobility Current Java-based agent systems do not
Agent system code runs inside the VM; no access to execution state
PMA Prototype (Bridge to Process Oriented) Variable Fault Dow nload Tools ACARS Reporting FRM Anecdotal BITE
Intelligent Agents
Independent Links
Media Servers
11.130.6 Evolution
Agent-Assisted Document Construction At the user-interface, agents work in conjunction with compound document and web browser frameworks and document management tools to select the right data, assemble the needed components, and present the information in the most appropriate way for a specific user and situation.
A
Agent-Assisted Software Integration Behind the scenes, agents take advantage of distributed object management, database, workflow, messaging, transaction, web, and networking capabilities to discover, link, manage, and securely access the appropriate data and services.
Develop middleware components to integrate and extend the capabilities of aviation legacy systems on a secure extranet to support:
Real-time aircraft and airport situational awareness and scheduling and planning functions Maintenance and operations procedures enhancements Feedback data mechanisms to design/manufacturing models and simulators
Conduct advanced research in decision support tools for the Aviation Community
Meta-Dbases
Industry Data Sources CORBA Inter faces Intelligent A gents Web Browser
Extranet Security
* Matchmaker is connected to
Information Sources