Jaime Simão Sichman

Multi-Agent Based Simulation

Messy systems have no clear boundaries; they are composed of so many natural and/or artificial entities with patterns of interaction so dense that they cannot be understood by inspection and system behaviour cannot be predicted by statistical or qualitative analysis. Obvious examples are real social systems and the Internet. Analysing and designing software to exploit such systems requires a different approach to software engineering and mechanism design. The issue addressed in the MABS-2000 workshop and in this volume is the development of a methodology and technology to identify which techniques hold promise and which cannot possibly lead to useful applications for messy software or social systems. 1 Messy Systems and Tidy Systems Much of AI and the great preponderance of papers at conferences such as ICMAS relate to software systems with clear boundaries and well understood relationships among known entities. The perceived development path is by means of step-by-step development of well understood formalisms and algorithms. These are tidy techniques for tidy systems. Real systems are frequently messy. The boundaries of action and opportunity are unclear and probably unknowable. Relationships among entities are either too complex to be understood or shifting faster than we can identify them. In short, we frequently do not know enough about the systems to make them amenable to tidy techniques for toy systems. The differences between messy and tidy systems have been recognised for some considerable time by the agents research community. Wooldridge and Jennings [20] argued that “[i]f a system contains many agents..., then the dynamics can become too complex to manage effectively. There are several techniques that one can use to try to manage a system in which there are many agents. First, one can place it under central control... Another way... is to severely restrict the way in which agents can interact... one can ensure that there are few channels of communication... [or] by restricting the way in which agents interact. Thus very

Developing organised multiagent systems using the MOISE + model: programming issues at the system and agent levels

Multiagent Systems (MASs) have evolved towards the specification of global constraints that heterogeneous and autonomous agents are supposed to follow when concerning open systems. A subset of these constraints is known as the MAS organisation. This article describes a set of computational tools that supports the development and the programming of such systems. At the system level, a middleware is provided which ensures that all agents will follow the organisational constraints. At the agent level, the AgentSpeak language is extended, using Jason features, so that the agents can perceive and act upon the organisation to which they belong.

A Model for the Structural, Functional, and Deontic Specification of Organizations in Multiagent Systems

A Multiagent System (MAS) that explicitly represents its organization normally focuses either on the functioning or the structure of this organization. However, addressing both aspects is a prolific approach when one wants to design or describe a MAS organization. The problem is to define these aspects in such a way that they can be both assembled in a single coherent specification. The MOISE+ model - described here through a soccer team example - intends to be a step in this direction since the organization is seen under three points of view: structural, functional, and deontic.

Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems III

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Workshops on Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2013. The workshops were co-located with AAMAS 2013, held in St. Paul, MN, USA in May 2013, and with PRIMA 2013, held in Dunedin, New Zealand, in December 2013. The 18 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions and are presented together with two invited papers. The papers are organized in topical sections such as coordination, organizations, institutions, norms, norm conflict, and norm-aware agents.

S-Moise + : a middleware for developing organised multi-agent systems

The Multi-agent Systems (MAS) area, while concerning heterogeneous and open systems, has evolved towards the specification of global constraints that agents are supposed to follow. A subset of these constraints are known as organisation of the MAS. This paper describes a software implementation, called

MOISE+: towards a structural, functional, and deontic model for MAS organization

\mathcal{S-M}oise^{+}

Multi-agent dependence by dependence graphs

, that tries to fill the gap between the organisational constraints and the agents autonomy. This software ensures that all agents will follow the organisation without requiring that they are developed in a specific language or architecture.

Multi-agent based simulation II

A Multi-Agent System (MAS) that represents explicitly its organization normally focuses either on the functioning or on the structure of this organization. However, addressing both aspects is a prolific approach when one wants to design or describe a MAS organization. The problem is to define these aspects in such a way that they can be both assembled in a single coherent specification. The MOISE+ model -- described here through a soccer team example -- intends to be a step in this direction since the organization is seen under three points of view: structural, functional, and deontic.

MOISE: An Organizational Model for Multi-agent Systems

In this paper, we present an abstract structure called dependence graph, an extension of the notion of dependence network, as proposed in [16]. While this latter can be applied to express a set of dependence relations of a single agent, this new structure can be applied to the multi-agent case. It can be used, therefore, for the study of emerging social structures, such as groups and collectives, and may form a knowledge base for managing complexity in both competitive and organisational or other cooperative contexts. We analyze several properties of this structure, relating them to some corresponding social phenomena regarding group formation and cohesiveness.

MAS and Social Simulation: A Suitable Sommitment

This paper is devoted to exploring the relationships between computational agents, as they can be found in multi-agent systems (MAS) or Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI), and the different techniques regrouped under the generic name “multi-agent based simulation” (MABS). Its main purpose is to show that MABS, despite its name, is in fact rarely based on computational agents. We base our demonstration on an innovative presentation of the methodological process used in the development of current MABS systems. This presentation relies on the definition of the different roles involved in the design process, and we are able to show that the notion of “agent”, although shared at a conceptual level by the different participants, does not imply a systematic use of computational agents in the systems deployed. We then conclude by discussing what the use of computational agents, based on the most interesting research trends in DAI or MAS, might provide MABS with.