Guoqiang Zhong

Ubiquitous computing with service adaptation using peer-to-peer communication framework

Mobile devices and wireless network infrastructures will be leading users to seamlessly use peer-to-peer services and ubiquitous computing by the growing of the infrastructures. In order to realize to use peer-to-peer services and ubiquitous services seamlessly, a new framework that enables users to use peer-to-peer services and ubiquitous computing is required. Hence, this paper describes a new ubiquitous computing framework, called VPC on KODAMA, using a peer-to-peer mechanism. Virtual Private Community (VPC) is an execution environment for peer-to-peer services, and provides a framework for definition of peer-to-peer services. Peer-to-peer services in VPC are defined as policy packages that have necessary elements to provide the services. Peer-to-peer services are offered in communities by collaboration among roles that are assigned to users. KODMA provides a network infrastructure for agents. Agents in KODAMA have their own community, and represent the communities. Communities have a hierarchy structure by agents residing in other agents communities. Agents have message filtering policy, and refuse messages that are against the policy. By unifying VPC and KODAMA, a new framework that enables services to define roles and their behavior and to manage logical relationship among communities is provided. VPC on KODAMA enables users to use peer-to-peer services and appliances seamlessly with their mobile devices.

Open distributed autonomous multi-agent coordination on the Web

Agent technology is becoming more prevalent as the availability of network access, and the demand for the end uses of agents becomes greater. Intelligent agents for information filtering and retrieval applications and tools are being employed in a variety of ways on the Web. A centralized agent for information discovery has usually limited capabilities for finding diverse and distributed information online. The main thrust of the paper is to present a framework that allows distributed adaptive information KODAMA agents to work together to browse and retrieve distributed information based on the preexisting hyperlink structure on the Web and how this community of agents can automatically extract meta-information and cooperate to retrieve online distributed relevant information. We have developed the software architecture, and a working prototype showing the benefits to the Web of interactive architectures based on the coordination of the hyperlink structure on the network. The authors summarize the current results of the project, and discuss some ideas on future work.

KODAMA: as a distributed multi-agent system

With the explosion of the Internet, we are evolving a worldwide network computing environment. At this point, the surged challenge is the next evolutionary technology for the Internet-oriented applications. A KODAMA (Kyushu university Open and Distributed Autonomous Multi-Agent) system is deployed for this demand. KODAMA system can interconnect disparate and distributed agents together to solve some problem whose solution is typically beyond any singular agents capabilities. The key aspects of KODAMA agents are their autonomy, collaboration, flexibility, as well as stability. To obtain all these features, an appropriate scheme of collaboration among agents is clearly critical. Our new approach focuses on both raising the level of abstraction at which agents cooperate with each other, and hiding the implementation details of communications from agents.

An information notification model with VPC on KODAMA in an ubiquitous computing environment, and its experiment

The notification of useful information to users is necessary to keep them aware of their environment and is of particular benefit in a ubiquitous computing environment. However, the amount and nature of information to be provided depends on circumstances. Too much information will confuse users. Systems used to disseminate information in a ubiquitous computing environment should not provide all information to all users, and should instead modify information disseminated depending on circumstances and context. In addition, systems designed for use in a ubiquitous computing environment need a security function for various reasons including privacy protection. For these reasons, we have developed an information dissemination model, called VPC on KODAMA. The model enables systems to provide an appropriate amount of information to users depending on circumstances and contains a security function. Using this model, we performed a large-scale experiment involving approximately one thousand participants. This paper contains the results of and discussions regarding this experiment.

Testing of Multi-agent-based System in Ubiquitous Computing Environment

Agent technology is ready to shift from the stage in which agent architectures are proposed to the stage in which applications working in the real world are developed. Accordingly, we have developed an agent-based application integrating VPC and KODAMA, as an example of a system where agents can behave effectively in the real world. VPC on KODAMA is a framework for actualizing a ubiquitous computing environment. VPC on KODAMA has a mechanism that assigns services to user agents according to their profiles. Using VPC on KODAMA, we developed an information notification system. This system sends advertisement e-mail tailored to user profiles, including user location, to the user’s cellular phone. We have conducted a large-scale experiment in shopping malls. The results of this experiment show that agent technology is effective for applications in ubiquitous computing environments.

From computer networks to agent networks

From the 1990s on, one of the most important challenges facing computer science researchers has been the design and construction of software tools to exploit Internet computing. At the same time, the development of agent technology has gone hand in hand with the explosion of the Internet. As worldwide network computing environments become more and more complex, software agents are believed to have the potential to help present and manage the Internet in an autonomous or semi-autonomous way. Yet, to date, a number of fundamental questions about the theory and practice of this new software engineering paradigm have remained unanswered. Here we explore the features that make the agent-based approach such an appealing and evolutionary computational model. In particular, we envision a global agent-based distributed computing architecture that provides a convenient programming abstraction and sufficient transparency. This paper gives a general introduction to the underlying concepts of our research and development both at the level of design philosophy and in practical implementation techniques. It is argued that the shift from computer networks to agent networks is a significant extension of network programming technology because agents are well suited to modeling, designing and implementing scalable, flexible and secure distributed systems over a worldwide computing environment.

You've Got Mail From Your Agent: A Location and Context Sensitive Agent System

The best way to evaluate a new technology such as the agent-oriented programming paradigm is to test it in the real world. In this article, we illustrate how multiagent systems can be deployed to analyse, design and implement a location- and context-dependent information system in a shopping mall. Our goal in this application was to help people by making personalised information available where and when it is needed in a way that disturbs them as little as possible and protects their privacy as much as possible. By employing the VPC communication framework on the KODAMA agent platform, we were able to build a shopping-support system as a collection of interacting, autonomous, flexible agents, with support functions capable of dynamically adapting services to client location and preferences as well as environment changes. Here we will give a close view of the system, examine application scenarios and discuss the pros and cons that emerged from the results of a large-scale experiment.

KODAMA project

This paper describes the design and implementation of a worldwide distributed multi-agent system, called KODAMA (Kyushu University Open & Distributed Autonomous Multi-Agent). Historically, research on multi-agent systems is a natural extension of the evolution of programming, as well as communications and control technologies. Through our work on the KODAMA project, we concentrate on enabling technologies for building scalable, flexible and secure multi-agent systems, which can operate in a worldwide computing environment. The innovative points of KODAMA are the approaches it takes to formalizing a global distributed computing architecture based on agent-oriented programming. The core concept behind our design is a separation principle that mandates the separation of application-level logic from agent-level logic and the separation of agent-level logic from network-level logic. In this way, the inherent distribution and complexity that the worldwide computing environment involve can be abstracted, encapsulated and tackled appropriately at different levels . In line with the separation principle, this article gives a general introduction to the key abstraction models that form the basis of KODAMA.

The KODAMA methodology: an agent-based distributed approach

The KODAMA methodology is our endeavour to explore new analysis and design methodologies, as well as new tools, for developing ubiquitous applications around autonomous, interacting software agents. To concrete and detail the well-known multiagent system paradigm, KODAMA introduces a plug-and-play agent model, an agent community model and an on-demand interaction model. At the top level, a whole system is decomposed into various agent communities. Working one level down, communities are broken down into independent agents. At the lowest level, agent roles are the basic entities for specifying agent activities in online interactions. In this article, we first present how these new models are exploited in the analysis and design phases; then discuss some details of how they are implemented in a practical shopping-support system.