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Agents & Mobile Agents

The document discusses agents and mobile agents. It defines agents as software systems that act intelligently on a user's behalf and exhibit autonomous, proactive, and reactive behaviors. Mobile agents are a type of software program that can move from machine to machine under its own control, suspending its execution on one machine to resume on another. The document contrasts remote procedure calls with mobile agents, noting that mobile agents transport both code and state from one machine to another. It also outlines some research issues in mobile agents regarding security, performance, strong mobility, and management of deployed agents.

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ThisMe Saleh
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41 views20 pages

Agents & Mobile Agents

The document discusses agents and mobile agents. It defines agents as software systems that act intelligently on a user's behalf and exhibit autonomous, proactive, and reactive behaviors. Mobile agents are a type of software program that can move from machine to machine under its own control, suspending its execution on one machine to resume on another. The document contrasts remote procedure calls with mobile agents, noting that mobile agents transport both code and state from one machine to another. It also outlines some research issues in mobile agents regarding security, performance, strong mobility, and management of deployed agents.

Uploaded by

ThisMe Saleh
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Agents & Mobile Agents

Agents - The Concept


software system which acts intelligently on your behalf convenient metaphor situated in an environment and exhibit behaviour which can be viewed as: pro-active, autonomous, communicative, persistent, mobile, benevolent, adaptive/learning, collaborative, reactive, deliberative, ... stronger notions of agency: mentalistic notions such as knowledge, beliefs, desire, intention, goals, and a logic for reasoning with them Cutting out the hype a kind of software and an approach to software design

Agent Definitions
Mission Impossible No consensus on a single definition New Buzzword Everybody wants to call their software Agents! Many synonyms just to add to the confusion
knowbots, softbots, personal assistants

What the Gurus Say


Wooldridge and Jennings A computer system situated in some environment Capable of Autonomous Action to meet its design objectives in this environment Autonomy ability to act without direct human intervention

Objects and Agents An Analogy


Objects encapsulate state, Agents encapsulate state + execution behaviour Objects have no control over the execution of methods Invocation of method m on object o involuntary whether object o likes it or not

Objects and Agents An Analogy


Agents have control of whether or not to perform any given action Request actions rather than invoke methods

Agents - Current Research and Industry


theories, architectures, languages, systems agent (internal structure) and mult-agents (collaboration, teamwork) still thriving research -> emerging industry >20 companies including IBM, BT, HP, Microsoft, Fujitsu, AgentSoft, Verity, AOS, Extempo, ... >40 books on software agents at Amazon >50 research laboratories worldwide organizations coordinating international agent research: Agent Society, AgentLink, Agents-in-Melbourne

Agents - Applications
many due to: appeal of the agent abstraction agent research spans disciplines: artificial intelligence, distributed computing, software engineering (ABSE), sociology, psychology, economics, object-oriented systems, artificial life, game theory, ... a sampling...

The Internet and the WWW


impetus for information agents gathering, filtering, sharing, monitoring, recommending, comparing information guiding Web surfers email filtering, autoresponders (e.g., Snoop, Smartbot) technologies: XML/HTML, machine learning, knowledge engineering

Electronic Commerce
automate CBB stages including product advertising, product brokering, merchant brokering, negotiation, purchase and delivery, customer services examples for brokering and negotiation: PersonaLogic, Firefly, BargainFinder, Jango, Kasbah, AuctionBot, Tete-a-tete, ShopBot needs: standards for unambiguous definition of commerce-related information such as goods, services, customer and business profiles, electronic forms

Business Process Management


streamline business processes in a more flexible and robust manner e.g.: ADEPT [Jennings et al] agents representing entities negotiate for services from each other negotiation rules applied to BT process for installing a network at a customers premises prototypes based on mobile agents: intra- and interorganizational workflows, supply-chain management in virtual enterprises, project management

Pilot Training
DSTO and AAIIs SWARMM system agents model pilot reasoning and tactics in air battle simulations plan and meta-plan language

Manufacturing
agents systems for: controlling manufacturing robots managing factory production processes e.g.: YAMS each factory and factory component is represented by an agent automates delegation of production orders via bidding between agents

And More...
agents for telecommunications: network modelling and QoS management medical informatics: e.g., multi-agent based distributed health care systems communityware: agents represent people in virtual communities distributed data mining

Agents - Standardization
Agent Communication Languages:
Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) ...

Agent Lifecycle Management, etc... Organizations creating specifications:


The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is a body for developing and setting computer software standards for heterogeneous and interacting agents and agent-based systems.(FIPA): >40 participants including Alcatel, BT, Hitachi, NEC, Siemens, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Telia,... OMG: e.g. MASIF

Important Types of Agents


Collaborative Interface Mobile Information / Internet Others Reactive, Hybrid, Smart Many Classification Schemes & Typologies exist => to come in the next lecture

What is a Mobile Agent ?


Software program Moves from machine to machine under its own control. Suspend execution at any point in time, transport itself to a new machine and resume execution Once created, a mobile agent autonomously decides which locations to visit and what instructions to perform Continuous interaction with the agents originating source is not required HOW? Implicitly specified through the agent code Specified through a run-time modifiable itinerary

RPC Vs Mobile Agents


Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) One computer calls procedures on another Messages: Requests and Responses Procedure is remote i.e. it is local to the machine that performs it Client and Server agree in advance on the protocol for communication Continuous on-going interaction and communication between the client and server

CLIENT

network

SERVER

RPC Vs Mobile Agents


Mobile Agents Instead of calling a procedure, supply the procedure as well Messages: Mobile Agent ( procedure + data + state) Sending computer may have begun the procedure and the receiving computer will continue the procedure On-going interaction, but NO on-going communication
Mobile Agent Service

CLIENT

network

SERVER

Research Issues
Security: protect host from agents, protect agents from agents, protect agents from host Performance: if Java or Python, performance penalities with interpretation (esp. for performance critical applications), but not for long? Strong mobility: move full execution state (stacks etc), stacks not accessible with current Java? MA management: how control and manage deployed agents issues: fault tolerance (e.g., agent fails, host fails), recalling agents, tracking agents, servicing agents (esp. longer living agents)

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