Invited Speakers
Prof. Paul Davidsson
Title: On the Integration of Agent-Based and Mathematical Optimization Techniques
Abstract
The strengths and weaknesses of agent-based approaches and classical optimization techniques are analyzed and compared. Their appropriateness for resource allocation problems were resources are distributed and demand is changing is evaluated. We conclude that their properties are complementary and that it seems beneficial to combine the approaches. Some suggestions of such hybrid systems are sketched and two of these are implemented and evaluated in a case study and compared to pure agent and optimization-based solutions. The case study concerns allocation of production and transportation resources in a supply chain. In one of the hybrid systems, optimization techniques were embedded in the agents to improve their decision making capability. In another hybrid system, optimization was used for creating a long-term coarse plan which served as input the agents that adapted it dynamically. The results from the case study indicate that it is possible to capitalize both on the ability of agents to dynamically adapt to changes and on the ability of optimization techniques of finding high quality solutions.Short bio
Paul Davidsson is professor at the Department of Systems and Software Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1996 from Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include the theory and application of multi-agent systems, autonomous agents, and machine learning. The results of this work have been reported in more than 80 peer-reviewed research articles published in international journals, conference proceedings, and books. In addition, Davidsson has been the co-editor for three books on Multi Agent Based Simulation. He is the founder and manager of the Distributed and Intelligent Systems Laboratory which consists of six senior researchers and eight Ph.D. students. He is member of the management committee for the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA), and the European Conference of Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS). Davidsson is a regular reviewer for more than ten different scientific journals. He has been member of the program committee of several international conferences such as AAMAS. He has been involved in a number of projects funded by both the EU and different Swedish funding agencies, in several occasions as the project manager.Prof. Paolo Giorgini
Title: Tropos: an Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Methodology
Abstract
In this talk I will introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all related mentalistic notions (for instance goals and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from early analysis down to the actual implementation. Second, Tropos covers also the very early phases of requirements analysis, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the environment where the software must operate, and of the kind of interactions that should occur between software and human agents. I will present the status of the methodology and our current ongoing work. For more details about Tropos, click here.Short Bio
Paolo Giorgini is researcher at University of Trento. He received his Ph.D. degree from Computer Science Institute of University of Ancona (Italy) in 1998. Between March and October 1998 he worked at University of Macerata and University of Ancona as research assistant. In November 1998 he joined the Mechanized Reasoning Group (MRG) at University of Trento as pos-doc researcher. In December 1998 he was researcher visiting at the Computer Science Department of University of Toronto (Canada) and more recently he was visiting researcher at the Software Engineering Department of University of Technology in Sydney. He has worked on the development of requirements and design languages for agent-based systems, and the application of knowledge representation techniques to software repositories and software development. He is one of the founder of Tropos, an agent-based oriented software engineering methodology. His publication list includes more than 140 refereed journal and conference proceedings papers and eight edited books. He has contributed to the organization of international conferences as chair and program committee member, such as CoopIS, ER, CAiSE, AAMAS, EUMAS, AOSE, AOIS, and ISWC. He is Co-editor in Chief of the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (IJAOSE).Prof. Toyoaki Nishida
Title: Embodied Conversational Agents in the Knowledge Spiral
Abstract
Conversation is the most natural communication means for people. People are quite skillful in presenting and interpreting verbal/nonverbal information in conversation so that they can communicate fairly sophisticated messages without much effort. The embodied conversational agent technology takes this advantage of conversational communication to enable human-computer interaction more friendly and enchanting to people.In this talk, I will present a computational approach to using embodied conversational agents as a primary means for augmenting the knowledge process for knowledge communities. I emphasize the importance of embedding embodied conversational agents into a larger schema of knowledge circulation in a community.
The key idea is to make embodied conversation agents data-driven by introducing conversation quanta, each of which is a package of interaction and content arising in a quantized segment of conversation. By so doing, we aim at encouraging each active member in a community to present her/his knowledge both effectively and easily to other community members, which we believe leads to making the community active and knowledge-rich.
Our approach consists of developing three technologies: one for driving embodied conversational agents by conversational contents, one for visually accumulating conversational contents, and one for acquiring conversation contents from conversation.
I will overview key technological issues, give some demonstrative examples, and discuss the future perspectives.
Short bio
Toyoaki Nishida is Professor at Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan. He received the B.E., the M.E., and the Doctor of Engineering degrees from Kyoto University in 1977, 1979, and 1984 respectively. His research area covers Artificial Intelligence and Human Computer Interaction. He founded an international workshop series on Social Intelligence Design in 2001. His current research focuses on Conversational Informatics and Social Intelligence Design. He serves for numerous academic activities, including a director and editor-in-chief for the journal of JSAI (Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence), an area editor (Intelligent Systems) of New Generation Computing, Program Chair for the Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology conferences 2006, and the IFIP TC12 representative from Japan.Prof. Andrzej Skowron
Title: Rough-Granular Computing in Multiagent Systems
Abstract
We outline the basic features of Rough-Granular Computing (RGC) and the role of RGC for approximate reasoning in Multiagent Systems (MAS). Several illustrative examples of application of RGC for approximate reasoning MAS are reported. In particular, we discuss applications of RGC in behavioral pattern identification, planning, learning of coalition formation, and discovery of structures of processes.