Marcos De Oliveira

Multi-agent interaction technology for peer-to-peer computing in electronic trading environments

Open trading environments involve a type of peer-to-peer computing characterised by well-defined interaction protocols that are used by the traders and sometimes updated dynamically. New traders can arrive at any time and acquire the protocols that are current. Multi-agent system technology is appropriate for these circumstances, and in this paper we present an approach that can be used to support multiple trader agents on multiple computing platforms. The approach involves the use of FIPA-compliant trader agents which (a) incorporate micro-agents for specific local tasks and (b) use coloured Petri nets in order to keep track of the local context of agent conversations. In order to enhance efficiency and employ standard transport services, the trader agents interact with peers on other platforms by means of JXTA technology. We illustrate the working of our approach by examining the operation of an example multi-agent system in commodities trading scenario.

Mechanisms for Cooperative Behaviour in Agent Institutions

Our approach is described for maintaining sustainable cooperative behaviour in agent-based peer-to-peer systems whose environments are organized into agent institutional societies. Instead of expelling uncooperative society members, our approach considers institutional mechanisms that attempt to encourage cooperative behaviour among society members in order to maintain satisfactory operational performance of the institution. This is accomplished by- dividing the society into subgroups, each of which is managed by a special monitor agent. The subgroup monitor agents help keep track of member agent reputations and manage the associated tags for each of the agents in their subgroup. Some experimental results are presented describing how these mechanisms operate.

Multi-agent interaction protocols of e-business

Multi-agent interaction protocols are used to support extended conversations between interacting agents. Traditionally, agent interaction protocols have just specified the overt interactions that take place among communicating agents and have ignored other, non-interactive, events that may have a bearing on the ensuing conversation. In this paper we present our own approach for modelling interaction protocols, which has drawn inspiration from narrative intelligence studies and which can incorporate aspects of the conversational context which are germane to the agent interaction. We argue that our approach is more suited to the support of complex interactions, such as can occur in e-business operations among agents, and we illustrate our approach by discussing an example based on commodities trading that involves multiple exchanges among a collection of interacting agents.

Multi-agent system technology for p2p applications on small portable devices

In this paper we discuss architectural design issues and trade-offs in connection with our experiences porting our agent-based platform, Opal, to the Sharp Zaurus personal digital assistant (PDA). At the present time, the Zaurus is able to run the Java-based Opal platform with RMI, HTTP and JXTA (but not JXME) as message transports. There were many adjustments that had to be made in order to establish JXTA functionality over Java Personal Profile on the Zaurus systems, but it may be an easier process in the future if some of these changes are incorporated into the JXTA standard. The wireless and Bluetooth capability of the Zaurus make it ideal for bridging the gap between Bluetooth networks and traditional networks. The extension of mobility to distributed Agent-based systems will be a significant growth area in future agent research, and the Zaurus PDA a glimpse into the future functionality that mobile distributed agent applications may provide. We also discuss how Opals unique support for micro agents may facilitate the deployment of advanced agent systems on future medium- and small-footprint devices.

Compreensão do modelo de king sobre o paradigma do Interacionismo Simbólico

Objetivou-se refletir sobre o modelo conceitual de King, segundo a abordagem do Interacionismo Simbolico, dentro do modelo de analises de teoria de Meleis. Para alcancar o objetivo, realizamos uma leitura dos tres modelos citados nos trabalho, buscando as congruencias e discrepâncias entre os conceitos e correlacionando-os. O estudo permitiu concluir que as teorias concordam ao elucidar o homem como um ser que reage e busca compreender o significado das coisas ao seu redor, planejando e julgando suas acoes e a dos outros. E importante a questao dos significados poderem ser modificados e gerarem a elaboracao de metas em comum.It was aimed to reflect on Kings Theory, according to the approach of Symbolic Interaccionism, and theory analyses model of Meleis. To reach the objective, we proceeded the reading of the three models as mentioned before, looking for the consistencies and discrepancies among the concepts and correlating them. The study allowed to conclude that the theories agree when elucidating the man as a being that reacts and search to understand the meaning of things to his/her circuit, drifting and judging their actions and the one of the other ones. It is important the subject of the meanings could be modified and they generate the elaboration of goals in common.

Model-Driven Development in Robotics Domain: A Systematic Literature Review

Robots are complex agents composed of various sensors and actuators that work together with software to meet specific requirements. The subset of robots that has the ability to interact among them and even with people, through gestures or speaking, is known as Social Robots. Model-Driven Development is a promising paradigm because it promotes the reuse of components and quick code generation with quality. ModelDriven Development has been widely used in the context of Robotics in order to reduce complexity, reduce development effort and reuse of software. Due to these facts, it becomes pertinent the development of a systematic literature review to compile these results. In this paper we investigate how MDD techniques have helped the field of Robotics, therefore a systematic literature review was conducted seeking to identify approaches and their main technical features, as well as the types of specific requirements, behavioral and social issues. We came to conclusion that the existing approaches provide many interesting capabilities, typically by using the component-based development paradigm seeking a higher level of software reuse and facilitating the implementation of systems.

A Method for Identifying Malicious Activity in Collaborative Systems with Maps

In this paper we describe the method we have created for the purpose of identifying misbehavior of users who intends to generate false trends in digital maps. Basically, the idea is to identify patterns of communities of users who strongly contribute with reports that lead a particular geographic area to be considered a hot spot. The association between hot spots, computed from Kernel Density Estimation techniques, and the methods for identifying communities in social networks is the main innovation of the method proposed. A multi-agent system was built in order to simulate several scenarios of malicious activities. This method has shown to be effective for alerting the possibility of malicious activity in a real system.

A Distributed Model for Institutions in Open Multi-agent Systems

The management of interoperations among agents in an open multi agent system demands a robust organization mechanism to take care of the whole interaction process. The use of institutional norms to rule a multi agent society is one well founded approach to implement organized agent interactions. This paper will present a distributed model to organize agent interoperations using institutions, as the main management element, and commitments between agents as a way to model interactions among agents and promote organized multi agent societies.

A message classifier based on multinomial Naive Bayes for online social contexts

Children and teenagers today are increasingly connected to the internet. The use by minors of social networks applications, and games that are connected to the internet offer the possibility of communication, can make them exposed to various threats. One of the most troubling threats is sexual abuse. Thus the objective of this project is to create a model for classifying messages, as normal or dangerous, according to the risk they present to the minor. In addition to integrating the developed model with a project that analyzes the behavior of minors in a social network (Facebook), and calculates the risk of the minor be a victim of sexual abuse. Finally, we use the model in the classification of messages obtained from a server of the game Minecraft, quite popular among children.

An Analysis of Software Agents, Environ-ments and Applications School (WESAAC): Retrospective, Relevance, and Trends

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) software has been increasing dramatically in last years. In this context, the Software Agents, Environments and Applications School (WESAAC) is a Brazilian event of MAS which is in its tenth edition. When studying a research area, it is important to identify the most active groups, topics, the research trends and so forth. This study aims to investigate how the WESAAC is evolving, by analysing the papers published in its ten editions. We adopted a research strategy that combines scoping study and systematic review good practices. We identify the most participating institutions and authors, the main topics discussed, the types of the contributions, the conferences and journals that have most referenced WESAAC papers, the publications with the greatest impact, and the trends in MAS. We found 128 papers over the 10 WESAAC editions, which were analysed and discussed.