The Art of Agent-Oriented Modeling

Abstract

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@mitpress.mit.edu.This book was set in Times New Roman on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSterling, Leon. The art of agent-oriented modeling / Leon S. Sterling and Kuldar Taveter. p. cm. -(Intelligent robotics and autonomous agents series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01311-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Intelligent agents (Computer software) 2. Computer software-Development. I. Taveter, Kuldar. II. Title. QA76.76.I58S757 2009 006.3-dc22 2008044231 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1Int roductionWe live today in a complicated world. Complexity comes in many guises, and ranges from small-scale to large-scale concerns. On the small scale, we interact with an everincreasing array of devices, most of them new and incompletely understood, such as mobile phones and portable digital music players. On the large scale we live in complex institutions-governments, corporations, educational institutions, and religious groups. No one can understand all that goes on in such institutions. A sensible response to dealing e¤ectively with the complexity is to seek help. Help can come from other people. We may hire a consultant to help us deal with government. We may get a friend to help us install a home wireless network, or we may use software tools to automate tasks like updating clocks and software. It might even be sensible to combine both people and software. An underlying purpose of this book is to help us conceptualize a complicated environment, where many parts-both social and technical-interact. The key concepts we use are agents and systems.The underlying question in this book is how to design systems that work e¤ectively in the modern environment, where computing is pervasive, and where people interact with technology existing in a variety of networks and under a range of policies and constraints imposed by the institutions and social structures that we live in. We use the word ''system'' in the broadest sense. Systems encompass a combination of people and computers, hardware, and software. There are a range of devices, from phones to MP3 players, digital cameras, cars, and information booths.We are particularly interested in systems that contain a significant software component that may be largely invisible. Why the interest? Such systems have been hard to build, and a lot of expensive mistakes have been made. We believe that better conceptualization of systems will lead to better software.In this first chapter, we discuss our starting philosophy. There are particular challenges within the modern networked, computing environment, such as its changeability and consequent uncertainty. We disc...

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“…Many authors emphasize the specific properties of the agents [59,61,62,63]. They include • autonomy -the agent operates as an independent process, with no direct human intervention and has control over its actions and internal state, • reactivity -the agent perceives its environment and promptly answers the perceived changes to its environment, • pro-activity -the agent not only reacts to the changes to its environment but also manifests a goaloriented behavior and takes initiative, • social ability -the agent can interact with other agents or humans, using an agent communication language, • self-analysis -the agent is capable of analyzing and explaining its behavior and capable of detecting its errors or success, • learning -the agent can adapt and improve by interaction with its environment,…”

“…Moreover, it can react to such changes [57,58]. The agent has a set of goals, certain capabilities to perform actions, and some knowledge (or beliefs) about its environment [59]. In addition, Thomsen [57] describes the agent as "a solution-oriented ensemble of capabilities including natural language processing, autonomous reasoning, proactive computing, discourse modeling, knowledge representation, action-oriented semantics, multimodal interaction, environmental awareness, self-awareness, and distributed architectures."…”

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“…However, they all put the emphasis on designing systems consisting of software agents rather than MAS consisting of software agents that support humans. Sterling and Taveter [19] proposed a suitable approach that includes features similar to AOSE methodologies but is geared towards designing MAS consisting of humans and software agents, which are respectively termed as human agents and man-made agents.…”

“…In this section we present two models -goal model and the merged agent and acquaintance model -that have been designed following the AOM [19] for the purpose of capturing important features of MAS.…”

“…According to the existing literature on agents and MAS [19], [22], it is important for any system consisting of more than one agent to demonstrate three main features; interactions between the agents, knowledge sharing as well as behavioural change according to the perceived changes in the environment or changes in the agent´s own knowledge. There are several communication types between agents but they are mainly categorized into client-server interactions and peer-to-peer interactions [23].…”