Majid Ali Khan

Convoy driving through ad-hoc coalition formation

Convoy driving on public highways is a useful phenomena which increases the safety and the throughput of the highway. We present an approach through which a wireless Convoy Driving Device assists the driver in the task of deciding to join or leave a convoy, influencing the speed and formation of the convoy. Our approach handles complex situations like the merging and splitting of convoys, and it offers valuable lessons with applications for other cases of teamwork of mobile entities.

Agent-based coalition formation in disaster response applications

We present an agent-based coalition formation approach for disaster response applications. We assume that agents are operating in a dynamic and dangerous environment, and they need to form convoys to efficiently traverse unsafe areas and rendezvous at task locations. We assume a dynamic model of multilevel coalition formation where agents can dynamically join and leave the convoy, and the goals of the convoy (as reflected in its physical path and schedule) is determined by its current members. We demonstrate our approach in a simulation study located in the environment of New Orleans in the hurricane Katrina aftermath

Software Engineering Challenges for Mutable Agent Systems

Reconfigurability and mutability are features frequently found in agents operating in heterogeneous computing environment. At the same time, they pose major challenges to the software engineering process. In this paper we review these challenges and discuss their implications towards the agent oriented software engineering methodologies. We propose a set of extensions to the Gaia agent-oriented design and analysis methodology. These extensions allow the methodology to handle certain important classes of mutable systems. These results are presented in the context of the Bond system, a FIPA compliant agent framework, with support for reconfigurability and mutability.

Negotiation-based coalitions in the physical world

We present a negotiation based coalition formation scheme for autonomous agents residing in the physical world. While in the virtual world we can abstract the negotiation into a calculation of rewards and ignore the details of the physical substrate of the negotiation, in the physical world we need to concern ourselves with variables such as the geographical location of the agent, range of the communication devices, path planning, obstacles and hazards, the necessity of co-location and the temporal constraints assocatiated with it. We concentrate on agents with coordinated location and speed (convoys) which can improve their performance by being able to traverse previously inaccessible areas. We assume a model where agents can dynamically join and leave the coalition.

A study of the robustness of agent performance in nine popular agent implementation paradigms

We investigate the robustness of agents implemented using nine frequently used paradigms of agent implementation. While some variation in the performance and robustness can be naturally attributed to the accidents of the implementation process and the individual skill of the developers, we found that there are also systematic differences between the individual paradigms.

Computer persona: a user interaction architecture for mobile environments

We propose a user interaction architecture, which allows users to treat a set of computer-like devices as a single computer persona. The computer persona covers a static set of devices (called the permanent range) but it can also dynamically extend to or leave rented or disposable devices (the temporary range). We identify three major challenges in the implementation of a computer persona: (a) the control and coordination problem, (b) the state handoff problem, and (c) the data staging problem. We discuss these challenges in detail and propose several solutions for each of them. We also present a heuristic based algorithm for the data staging mechanism.