Masatoshi Miyazaki

Assuring interoperability between heterogeneous multi-agent systems with a gateway agent

In this research, we address the problem of a lack of communications between heterogeneous multi-agent systems. For example, the KQML-based agent cannot talk to the FIPA-based agent and vice versa. We have identified three main reasons why different multi-agent systems are not interoperable, which we call architectural elements: (1) inconsistent mental state structures; (2) different syntax and semantics of the agent communication languages; and (3) incompatible message transport mechanisms. To solve this problem, we propose a gateway agent as a translator of the agent communications that assures the integration of heterogeneous multi-agent systems. We have developed a prototype of the gateway agent that can translate messages between the KQML agent and FIPA agent. Based on the results, we are studying a higher level of interoperability based on conversation protocols between agents.

Mining Frequent Patterns Securely in Distributed System*A part of this paper was presented at the international conference on intelligent data engineering and automated learning, UK., 2004. This work was supported in part by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Data mining across different companies, organizations, online shops, or the likes is necessary so as to discover valuable shared patterns, associations, trends, or dependencies in their shared data. Privacy, however, is a concern. In many situations it is required that data mining should be conducted without any privacy being violated. In response to this requirement, in this paper we propose an effective distributed privacy-preserving data mining approach called SDDM. SDDM is characterized by its ability to resist collusion. Unless the number of colluding sites in a distributed system is larger than or equal to 4, privacy cannot be violated. Results of performance study demonstrated the effectiveness of SDDM.

Assuring interoperability in heterogeneous, autonomous and decentralized multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems are autonomous decentralized platform software on which application programs such as business transactions, network provisioning and manufacturing control are deployed. In order for the applications to be truly autonomous and decentralized, however, heterogeneous multi-agent systems themselves must communicate and interoperate with each other. To solve the problem, we take a two-step approach. First, the message-level interoperability is achieved by a gateway agent that interconnects heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Next, a higher-level interoperation of conversations, which consist of bi- (or multi-) directional streams of messages, is governed by interaction protocols. We demonstrate the concept and technique of dynamic negotiation of interaction protocols and show how the method improves the assurance of real-world applications in autonomous decentralized systems.

Improving performance of parallel transaction processing systems by balancing data load on line

The performance of parallel transaction processing systems can be degraded significantly due to data skew, a phenomenon of unbalanced data distribution over the nodes of a system. Rebalancing the data load of a system with data skew by redistributing its data is known to be an effective approach to cope with data skew. Unfortunately, for most of the existing approaches, the data being redistributed is unavailable (off-line). Numerous applications, such as those for reservations, finance, process control, hospitals, police and the armed forces, however, cannot afford off-line data for any significant amount of time. These applications call for the ability of balancing data load online. In this paper, a new online data redistribution approach is proposed. A prototype of the approach has been implemented, and experiments have been conducted. Experimental results confirm the substantial performance gains of the approach.

Information hiding with a handwritten message in vector-drawing codes

The Internet has been evolving exponentially, and various types of communication systems for computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) are available throughout networks. Some of those systems provide handwriting functions, and handwritten messages are often used for authentication. In other communication systems, however, one needs information hiding. A requirement of a communication system is to provide a subliminal channel for secret communications. This paper presents new algorithms for information hiding with a handwritten message which is encoded with vector drawing.

A message board on WWW for on-door communication

This paper reports on our trial of the development of a message board system on the World-Wide Web (WWW), which supports communications between a receiver and anonymous senders. We call this type of system an “on-door” communication board, and implemented a prototype based on our experience of the operation of such a board on the door of a room in a graduate student hall of residence.

Natural language programming for multimedia information

Learning a programming language is difficult for the beginner of the computer. Therefore, it is necessary to build an intelligent programming environment in which the program can be written directly in the grammar of ones mother tongue. In this paper, we propose a model of an intelligent programming environment that is oriented to the Japanese. In this model, the text that describes in Japanese the layout of multimedia contents and the relationship between two multimedia contents can be parsed with the technology of machine translation translated into an executable program, and executed. As an application of the proposed model, an environment called ACORNS is implemented. The performance study of ACORNS is performed. The results of the performance study shows that the proposed model is robust.

A communication computation model for developing computer supported cooperative work systems

Cooperative work is done not only by workers but with some software used by each worker. They do various communications including interaction between worker and software in cooperative works. To develop computer supported cooperative work systems, it is important to support various communications among them. A computational model that can represent communicative objects such as workers and software and various communications among them is necessary for that purpose. We propose this communication computation model as such a model. A worker and software are represented as the Autonomous Object, and a group is represented as the Group Field in this model. Various communications are represented by communicative functions that correspond to each communication form. We show that our model is effective for modeling various communications in cooperative work.