Agent Protocols for Social Computation

Abstract

Abstract. Despite the fact that social computation systems involve interaction mechanisms that closely resemble well-known models of agent coordination, current applications in this area make little or no use of the techniques the agent-based systems literature has to offer. In order to bridge this gap, this paper proposes a data-driven method for defining and deploying agent interaction protocols that is entirely based on using the standard architecture of the World Wide Web. This obviates the need of bespoke message passing mechanisms and agent platforms, thereby facilitating the use of agent coordination principles in standard Web-based applications. We describe a prototypical implementation of the architecture and experimental results that prove it can deliver the scalability and robustness required of modern social computation applications while maintaining the expressiveness and versatility of agent interaction protocols.

Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação: pesquisas em inovações tecnológicas - Volume 2

“…This computational capacity embedded in information sharing activities on the Web is called sociotechnical computing, which reflects explicitly conditional actions and the inhe- applications that mediate collective interaction between humans (Shadbolt et al, 2013). This, in turn, implies a growing interest in applications that embody a multi-perspective notion of hybrid human-machine intelligence, in which human capabilities and computational artifacts complement each other (Rovatsos, 2014).…”

Programming Model Elements for Hybrid Collaborative Adaptive Systems

“…Discovery can be either performed by actively picking members [8], or by coordinating the process of self-formation of the collective as integral part of the composition and negotiation phases. In the latter case, the OM uses a static decision tree for scheduling the messages of subscription, agreement and withdrawal to the proposed plans originating from human peers [9]. At the moment, during composition the OM generates all possible execution plans that include the participants who satisfy the required constraints.…”

“…Composition state: The composition process calculates feasible task execution plans, consisting of ordered activities (steps) required to process the given task and associated performer peers. Generation of execution plans is usually a task-specific, non-trivial problem involving advanced planning and constraint satisfaction algorithms, going well beyond the scope of this paper; the description of the currently offered composition algorithms can be found in [9] and here 4 . From the programming model's perspective, however, it suffices to know the required inputs and outputs of this state: the input is the 'provisioned' collective from the previous state, while the output is a list of collectives 'negotiables', associated with composed execution plans, which get passed on to the following state.…”

SmartOrch

“…A formal framework that allows general user interaction models, described as multi-agent protocols with different roles and activities, to be mapped onto orchestration architectures in ways that permit composition of complex application workflows has been previously described in [15]. Figure 1 shows an example of such a protocol, where a peer role p interacts with an orchestrator role o, traversing the different stages of the social computation lifecycle.…”

“…The participants of any proposed task t ∈ T can agree or refuse to participate in it. [15]. Swimlanes represent peer roles, boxes their internal processing steps, and diamonds choice points.…”