MAS 01 Intro - Sisteme Multi Agent

Sisteme Multi-Agent
Conf. dr. ing. Andrei Olaru
andrei.olaru@cs.pub.ro | cs@andreiolaru.ro
Departamentul de Calculatoare
2019
Agents Environment Features Cognition MAS MAS Applications About this course
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Sisteme Multi-Agent – Andrei Olaru
Part 1
Introduction
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Part 1: Introduction
1 Software Agents
2 Agents and the Environment
3 Agent Features
4 Cognition (?)
5 Multi-Agent Systems
6 MAS Applications
7 About this course
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Software Agents
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Motivation for this field
Why would we ever need agents?
Solve complex problems in dynamic environments.
the environment is influenced by many factors
the environmant changes, unpredictably
other entities exist in the environment

they use the same resources and/or
they are able to offer expertise
the problem to solve involves the integration of legacy

systems
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Agents in general
What could an agent be? What do we already know?
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Agents in general
Secret agent, press agent, talent agent, insurance agent,

biological agent, chemical agent.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent]
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Agents in general
Secret agent, press agent, talent agent, insurance agent,

biological agent, chemical agent.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent]
· An agent acts outside its organization, representing the

interests of its organization, having its own agenda, goals,
and plan, and is capable of taking decisions in its interaction
with the environment.
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· · · · · ·
Software agents
What would a software agent be then?
An agent: a software entity (program) that is

autonomous, has a continuous lifecycle over some time
(is persistent), and interacts with its environment, in
which other agents and entities may exist. It is oriented
towards fulfilling a goal rather than processing data.
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· · · · · ·
Software agents
What would a software agent be then?
An agent: a software entity (program) that is

autonomous, has a continuous lifecycle over some time
(is persistent), and interacts with its environment, in
which other agents and entities may exist. It is oriented
towards fulfilling a goal rather than processing data.
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Agent definitions
How various scientists view agents
“Most often, when people use the term ’agent’ they refer to an entity that
functions continuously and autonomously in an environment in which
other processes take place and other agents exist.” [Shoham, 1993]
“An agent is an entity that senses its environment and acts upon it”
[Russell et al., 1995]
“Intelligent agents continuously perform three functions: perception of
dynamic conditions in the environment; action to affect conditions in the
environment; and reasoning to interpret perceptions, solve problems,
draw inferences, and determine actions.” [Hayes-Roth, 1995]
“Intelligent agents are software entities that carry out some set of
operations on behalf of a user or another program, with some degree of
independence or autonomy, and in so doing, employ some knowledge or
representation of the user’s goals or desires.” [the IBM Agent]
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History
Where do agents come from?
The concept of an agent can be traced back to Hewitt’s

Actor Model [Hewitt, 1977] – “A self-contained, interactive
and concurrently-executing object, possessing internal
state and communication capability.”.
Multi-agent systems are an evolution of the Distributed

Artificial Intelligence paradigm (which comes from DPS
– Distributed problem solving). [Weiss, 1999]
In the 1980s there are already multiple models of

agency, including the BDI model.
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Agents and the Environment
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The Environment around the Agent
· The interaction between the agent and the environment is

central to the agent’s activity.
Perceive
←−−−−−
Act Environment
Agent −−−−−→
Environment:
Accessible vs inaccessible
Deterministic vs nondeterministic
Episodic vs non-episodic
Static vs dynamic
Open vs closed
Contains or not other agents
Real-time
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· · · · · ·
Agent Features
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Agent features
How can we characterize an agent?
autonomy – agents operate without the direct intervention of

humans or others, and have some kind of control over their
actions and internal state;
reactivity – agents perceive their environment and respond in
a timely fashion to changes that occur in it;
pro-activeness – agents do not simply act in response to their
environment, they are able to exhibit goal-directed behavior
by taking initiative;
social ability – agents interact with other agents (and possibly
humans) via some kind of [agent-]communication language;
· Also: persistence, representation, mobility, rationality, learning,

adaptivity [Wooldridge, 2002]
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Agents help!
Application needs – manage large-scale heterogeneous

systems →− build more ubiquitous, more interconnected
computer systems;
Tool for understanding human societies – through

simulation of interactions;
Speed-up and efficiency – parallel, asynchronous,

distributed operation (loose couplng);
Robustness and reliability – failure of some agents does

not have a major influence on the working of others;
Scalability and flexibility – just add more agents;

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Agent-Oriented Programming
AOP means shifting the focus from designing a system

as a whole to designing the individual entities in the
system so that they work together towards solving a
problem.
Entities don’t have to be named agents, it’s just a

question of perspective.
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Agents versus . . . ?
How to know if it is an agent and not something else?
. . . vs objects
. . . vs expert systems
. . . vs distributed systems
· See also the Introduction to [Wooldridge, 2002].
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more autonomous;
more flexible;
. . . vs objects ←
proactive;
persistent, own thread.
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more autonomous;
more flexible;
proactive;
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more autonomous;
more flexible;
proactive;
coupled to the environment;
. . . vs expert systems ← reactive / proactive;
social.
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more autonomous;
more flexible;
proactive;
social.
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more autonomous;
more flexible;
proactive;
social.
coordination mechanisms
not hardwired at runtime;
. . . vs distributed systems ←
loose coupling;
self-interested.
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Cognition (?)
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Reactive agents
Dumb agents – no intelligence
Reactive agents are simple processing units that perceive

and react to changes in their environment.
They do not have a symbolic representation of the world and

do not use complex symbolic reasoning.
The advocates of reactive agent systems claims that

intelligence is not a property of the active entity but it is
distributed in the system, and steams as the result of the
interaction between the many entities of the distributed
structure and the environment.
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Reactive multi-agent systems
Some results; what emergence means
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benard_cells] [Mamei et al., 2004]
[Picard, 2005]
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Cognitive agents
How do agents acquire intelligence?
The model of human intelligence and human perspective of

the world → characterize an intelligent agent using symbolic
representations and mentalistic notions [Shoham, 1993]:
knowledge – John knows humans are mortal;
beliefs – John took his umbrella because he believed it was
going to rain;
desires – John wants to be successful;
goals – John is decided to get a PhD;
intentions – John intends to sign up for PhD studies, then to
study various fields;
commitments – John will not stop working until getting his
PhD;
obligations – John has to provide for his family.
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An example problem: pray and predators
Modeling a problem in different ways
The reactive approach:

The prey emits a signal of intensity
decreasing with distance (attractor);
Hunters emit a signal which acts as a
repellent for other hunters;
Each hunter is each attracted by the
pray and (weakly) repelled by the other
hunters.
The cognitive approach:
Detection of prey;
Setting up the hunting team; allocation of roles;
Re-organization of teams;
Necessity for dialogue/communication and for coordination;
Predator agents have goals, they appoint a leader that organizes the
distribution of work and coordinates actions.
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· · · · · ·
Emotional agents
Going further than cognitive
A computable science of emotions

Virtual actors
Listen to people trough speech recognition software
Respond, in real time, with morphing faces, music, text, and
speech
Emotions:
Appraisal of a situation as an event: joy, distress;
Presumed value of a situation as an effect affecting another:
happy-for, gloating, resentment, jealousy, envy, sorry-for;
Appraisal of a situation as a prospective event: hope, fear;
Appraisal of a situation as confirming or disconfirming an
expectation: satisfaction, relief, fears-confirmed,
disappointment.
Manifest temperament – control of emotions
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Multi-Agent Systems
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Multi-agent systems
What if there are more agents?
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Multi-agent systems (2)
How do more agents interact?
· knowledge about [the existence of] other agents

· perceiving other agents’ actions
Communication for:
coordination
cooperation
collaboration
organization
Coordination:
collectively motivated (same goal)
self interested
competition vs cooperation
Hierarchies: centralized / decentralized, hierarchical,
markets
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MAS Applications
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MAS versus other domains
MAS are not alone
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MAS R&D
What do scientists research in the MAS domain?
· Agent architectures
· Knowledge representation: of world, of itself, of the other
agents
· Communication: languages, protocols
· Planning: task sharing, result sharing, distributed planning
· Coordination, distributed search
· Decision making: negotiation, markets, coalition formation
· Learning
· Organizational theories
· Norms
· Trust and reputation
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MAS R&D / Implementation
What do people implement in the MAS domain?
Implementation:
· Agent programming: paradigms, languages
· Agent platforms
· Middleware, mobility, security
Applications:
· Industrial applications: R/T manufacturing and
production process, telecommunication networks,
electricity distribution systems, etc.
· Business process management, decision support
· eCommerce, eMarkets
· Information retrieving and filtering
· Human-computer interaction
· CAI, Web-based learning, CSCW
· Entertainment
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About this course
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Motivation for this course
Why would you take this course?
The agent-oriented paradigm is adequate for solving the

complex problems posed by modern computing
applications / infrastructures.
Although maybe in your career you will not use agents

per se, you will learn about the challenges of designing
software that is autonomous and adaptive, presenting a
certain degree of ’intelligence’.
Course applications (laboratory) are interesting, fun,

and lets you focus on solving new problems, using a
language that you already know well (Java).
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Course goals
A multi-agent system is a collection of distributed

autonomous artifacts / entities that are capable of
accomplishing complex tasks through interaction,
coordination, collective intelligence and emergence of
behavior patterns.
By the end of this course you will know:
what a software agent is, what a MAS is, and what the
agent-oriented paradigm is about;
how to build a multi-agent system or choose an
appropriate MAS framework for solving a problem;
how to apply the agent-oriented paradigms in various
applications.
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Course content
What you are going to learn
What software agents and MAS are, MAS applications

Agent architectures
Elements of knowledge representation
How agents can communicate
Elements of game theory
Auction, negotiation
Distributed planning and agent coordination
AOP – agent-oriented programming
Learning in MAS
MAS applications, Ambient Intelligence, web services
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Course requirements and point system
How to prove that you have learned
study of MAS elements trough
Laboratory: 25% ←
various problems
larger application featuring a
MAS (that you design and
Project: 15% ←
implement) for a specific
application
Lecture activity: 5% ← bonus
verifies your knowledge on
Mid-term exam: 20% ←
the first part of the course
contains a limited number of
Final exam: 40% ← questions from the mid-term
subjects
Requirements: minimum of 7 lab attendances, minimum
of 50% of term activity (mid-term, lab, project)
L MT P Ex
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Bibliography I
Austin, J. L. (1975).
How to do things with words, volume 88.
Harvard University Press.
Brooks, R. A. (1986).
A robust layered control system for a mobile robot.
Robotics and Automation, IEEE Journal of, 2(1):14–23.
Chapman, D. and Agre, P. (1987).

Abstract reasoning as emergent from concrete activity.
Reasoning about actions and plans, pages 411–424.
Decker, K. S. and Lesser, V. R. (1992).

Generalizing the partial global planning algorithm.
International Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, 1(02):319–346.
Drogoul, A., Corbara, B., and Fresneau, D. (1995).

MANTA: New experimental results on the emergence of (artificial) ant societies.
Artificial Societies: the computer simulation of social life, pages 190–211.
Durfee, E. H. (2006).
Distributed problem solving and planning.
In Multi-agent systems and applications, pages 118–149. Springer.
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Bibliography II
Durfee, E. H. and Lesser, V. R. (1991).

Partial global planning: A coordination framework for distributed hypothesis formation.
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on, 21(5):1167–1183.
Ferguson, I. A. (1995).
Integrated control and coordinated behavior: a case for agent models.
In Proceedings of the workshop on agent theories, architectures, and languages on Intelligent agents,
pages 203–218. Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
Finin, T., Fritzson, R., McKay, D., and McEntire, R. (1994a).
KQML as an agent communication language.
In Proceedings of the third international conference on Information and knowledge management, pages
456–463. ACM.
Finin, T., Weber, J., Wiederhold, G., Genesereth, M., Fritzson, R., McKay, D., Shapiro, S., McGuire, J.,
Pelavin, R., and Beck, C. (1994b).
Specification of the KQML agent-communication language
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.38.7110.
FIPA, T. (2008).
FIPA communicative act library specification.
Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents,
http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00037/SC00037J.html (30.6. 2004).
9:2/7
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Bibliography III
Florea, A. and Panghe, B. (2000).

Achieving cooperation of self-interested agents based on cost.
In Proceedings of the 15th European Meeting on Cybernetics and System Research, Session: From
Agent Theory to Agent Implementation, Vienna, pages 591–596. Citeseer.
Georgeff, M., Pell, B., Pollack, M., Tambe, M., and Wooldridge, M. (1999).
The belief-desire-intention model of agency.
In Intelligent Agents V: Agents Theories, Architectures, and Languages, pages 1–10. Springer.
Hayes-Roth, B. (1985).
A blackboard architecture for control.
Artificial intelligence, 26(3):251–321.
Hayes-Roth, B. (1995).
An architecture for adaptive intelligent systems.
Artificial Intelligence, 72(1):329–365.
Hewitt, C. (1977).
Viewing control structures as patterns of passing messages.
Jennings, N. R. (1995).
Controlling cooperative problem solving in industrial multi-agent systems using joint intentions.
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Bibliography IV
Jennings, N. R. (1996).
Coordination techniques for distributed artificial intelligence.
Foundations of distributed artificial intelligence, pages 187–210.
Kaelbling, L. P. (1991).
A situated-automata approach to the design of embedded agents.
ACM SIGART Bulletin, 2(4):85–88.
Kraus, S., Sycara, K., and Evenchik, A. (1998).

Reaching agreements through argumentation: a logical model and implementation.
Artificial Intelligence, 104(1):1–69.
Labrou, Y. and Finin, T. (1994).

A semantics approach for KQML - a general purpose communication language for software agents.
In Proceedings of the third international conference on Information and knowledge management, pages
447–455. ACM.
Labrou, Y. and Finin, T. (1998).
Semantics for an agent communication language.
Springer.
Labrou, Y., Finin, T., et al. (1998).
Semantics and conversations for an agent communication language.
Readings in Agents, pages 235–242.
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Bibliography V
Lesser, V. R. (1991).
A retrospective view of FA/C distributed problem solving.
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on, 21(6):1347–1362.
Maes, P. et al. (1994).

Agents that reduce work and information overload.
Communications of the ACM, 37(7):30–40.
Mamei, M., Vasirani, M., and Zambonelli, F. (2004).

Self-organizing spatial shapes in mobile particles: The TOTA approach.
In Brueckner, S., Serugendo, G. D. M., Karageorgos, A., and Nagpal, R., editors, Engineering
Self-Organising Systems, Methodologies and Applications (after ESOA 2004 workshop), volume 3464
of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 138–153. Springer.
Müller, J. (1997).
A cooperation model for autonomous agents.
Intelligent Agents III Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, pages 245–260.
Müller, J., Pischel, M., and Thiel, M. (1995).

Modeling reactive behaviour in vertically layered agent architectures.
Intelligent Agents, pages 261–276.
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Bibliography VI
Parunak, H. V. D. (1999).
Industrial and practical applications of DAI.
Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pages 377–421.
http://the-mas-book.info/index-first-edition.html.
Patil, R. S., Fikes, R., Patel-Schneider, P. F., McKay, D. P., Finin, T. W., Gruber, T. R., and Neches, R.
(1992).
The DARPA knowledge sharing effort: A progress report.
KR, 92:777–788.
Pereira, F. C. and Warren, D. H. (1980).

Definite clause grammars for language analysis - a survey of the formalism and a comparison with
augmented transition networks.
Picard, G. (2005).
Cooperative agent model instantiation to collective robotics.
In Engineering Societies in the Agents World V: 5th International Workshop, ESAW 2004, Toulouse,
France, October 20-22, 2004: Revised Selected and Invited Papers. Springer.
Russell, S. J., Norvig, P., Canny, J. F., Malik, J. M., and Edwards, D. D. (1995).
Artificial intelligence: a modern approach, volume 2.
Prentice hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
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Bibliography VII
Searle, J. R. (1969).
Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language.
Cambridge university press.
Shoham, Y. (1993).
Agent-oriented programming.
Steels, L. (1990).
Cooperation between distributed agents through self-organisation.
pages 8–14.
Weiss, G. (1999).
Multiagent systems: a modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence.
MIT press.
Wellman, M. P. (1993).
A market-oriented programming environment and its application to distributed multicommodity flow
problems.
arXiv preprint cs/9308102.
Wooldridge, M. (2002).
An introduction to multiagent systems.
Wiley.
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Sisteme Multi-Agent

Conf. dr. ing. Andrei Olaru

2 Agents and the Environment

7 About this course

Solve complex problems in dynamic environments.

the environment is influenced by many factors

the environmant changes, unpredictably

other entities exist in the environment

the problem to solve involves the integration of legacy

Secret agent, press agent, talent agent, insurance agent,

Secret agent, press agent, talent agent, insurance agent,

· An agent acts outside its organization, representing the

An agent: a software entity (program) that is

An agent: a software entity (program) that is

The concept of an agent can be traced back to Hewitt’s

Multi-agent systems are an evolution of the Distributed

In the 1980s there are already multiple models of

· The interaction between the agent and the environment is

autonomy – agents operate without the direct intervention of

· Also: persistence, representation, mobility, rationality, learning,

Application needs – manage large-scale heterogeneous

Tool for understanding human societies – through

Speed-up and efficiency – parallel, asynchronous,

Robustness and reliability – failure of some agents does

Scalability and flexibility – just add more agents;

AOP means shifting the focus from designing a system

Entities don’t have to be named agents, it’s just a

· See also the Introduction to [Wooldridge, 2002].

Reactive agents are simple processing units that perceive

They do not have a symbolic representation of the world and

The advocates of reactive agent systems claims that

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benard_cells] [Mamei et al., 2004]

The model of human intelligence and human perspective of

The reactive approach:

A computable science of emotions

· knowledge about [the existence of] other agents

The agent-oriented paradigm is adequate for solving the

Although maybe in your career you will not use agents

Course applications (laboratory) are interesting, fun,

A multi-agent system is a collection of distributed

What software agents and MAS are, MAS applications

Chapman, D. and Agre, P. (1987).

Decker, K. S. and Lesser, V. R. (1992).

Drogoul, A., Corbara, B., and Fresneau, D. (1995).

Durfee, E. H. and Lesser, V. R. (1991).

Florea, A. and Panghe, B. (2000).

Kraus, S., Sycara, K., and Evenchik, A. (1998).

Labrou, Y. and Finin, T. (1994).

Maes, P. et al. (1994).

Mamei, M., Vasirani, M., and Zambonelli, F. (2004).

Müller, J., Pischel, M., and Thiel, M. (1995).

Pereira, F. C. and Warren, D. H. (1980).

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