Tetsuo Kinoshita

A Multiagent System for Microgrid Operation in the Grid-interconnected Mode

This paper presents a multiagent system for microgrid operation in the grid-interconnected mode. An energy market environment with generation competition is adopted for microgrid operation in order to guarantee autonomous participation and meet the requirements of participants in the micro- grid. The modified Contract Net Protocol (CNP) is used as a protocol for interactions among agents. The multiagent system for microgrid operation based on the modified CNP and the energy market en- vironment is designed and implemented. To verify the feasibility of the suggested multiagent system, experiments on three operation conditions are carried out.

Talmudic Approach to Load Shedding of Islanded Microgrid Operation Based on Multiagent System

This paper presents a load-shedding scheme using the Talmud rule in islanded microgrid operation based on a multiagent system. Load shedding is an intentional load reduction to meet a power balance between supply and demand when supply shortages occur. The Talmud rule originating from the Talmud literature has been used in bankruptcy problems of finance, economics, and communications. This paper approaches the load-shedding problem as a bankruptcy problem. A load-shedding scheme is mathematically expressed based on the Talmud rule. For experiment of this approach, a multiagent system is constructed to operate test islanded microgrids autonomously. The suggested loadshedding scheme is tested on the test islanded microgrids based on the multiagent system. Results of the tests are discussed.

A New Modified CNP for Autonomous Microgrid Operation Based on Multiagent System

This paper presents a new modified Contract Net Protocol (CNP) for microgrid operation based on multiagent system. The CNP is a widely used protocol for interactions among distributed problem solving. The Contract Net Interaction Protocol of the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA-CNIP) is a minor modification of the original CNP for multiagent system applications. In this paper, a modified CNP (MCNP) based on the FIPA-CNIP is proposed for more specialized interactions among agents for microgrid operation. A multiagent system is designed and constructed for microgrid operation. A microgrid operation based on the multiagent system is tested to check the functionality of the proposed MCNP.

A Bankruptcy Problem Approach to Load-shedding in Multiagent-based Microgrid Operation

A microgrid is composed of distributed power generation systems (DGs), distributed energy storage devices (DSs), and loads. To maintain a specific frequency in the islanded mode as an important requirement, the control of DGs’ output and charge action of DSs are used in supply surplus conditions and load-shedding and discharge action of DSs are used in supply shortage conditions. Recently, multiagent systems for autonomous microgrid operation have been studied. Especially, load-shedding, which is intentional reduction of electricity use, is a critical problem in islanded microgrid operation based on the multiagent system. Therefore, effective schemes for load-shedding are required. Meanwhile, the bankruptcy problem deals with dividing short resources among multiple agents. In order to solve the bankruptcy problem, division rules, such as the constrained equal awards rule (CEA), the constrained equal losses rule (CEL), and the random arrival rule (RA), have been used. In this paper, we approach load-shedding as a bankruptcy problem. We compare load-shedding results by above-mentioned rules in islanded microgrid operation based on wireless sensor network (WSN) as the communication link for an agent’s interactions.

A flexible videoconference system based on multiagent framework

We present a design and implementation of a flexible videoconference system (VCS) using multiagent computing technology. The proposed system, we named FVCS, aims to reduce the burden of the users under the operational environment with insufficient computational resources, such as the Internet environment with small-scale computers at homes and offices, by embedding flexibility to the conventional videoconference system. In this paper, we design and implement FVCS with knowledge-based multiagent framework to realize adaptability of FVCS. We also evaluate the adaptability of the prototype systems of FVCS based on an operational situation observed in its experiments. From the result of the experiments, we conclude that the multiagent-based design and implementation is reasonable for construction of FVCS.

Framework of a flexible computer communication network

With the increasing speed of computers and communication links, and the successful convergence of both fields, computers connected by high speed links now represent an enormously large distributed computing system. At the same time, communication between man and machine is also becoming more diverse and personalized. Networking issues such as evolution of user services, seamless communication between hosts, failure recovery and integration of new technologies arise daily. Problem-specific approaches and corresponding solutions are available at considerable cost. However, a common requirement is adaptability of the computer network to a variety of changes. In this paper, we propose Flexible Computer Communication Networks (FN) as a uniform solution to most of these networking problems. The framework of Flexible Networks can be considered as an intelligent shell enclosing existing networking architectures. An agent-oriented implementation of a flexible network is outlined. The conversion of existing networks to flexible networks is shown to be incremental, and therefore practicable.

Design and implementation of interactive design environment of agent system

The agent-based systems have been designed and developed using the latest agent technologies. However, the design and the debugging of these systems contain some difficult problems due to the situational and nondeterministic nature of the agents, and the effective design-supporting technologies have not been proposed so far. In order to make efficient design process of agent system, we propose an interactive development method of agent system based on the agent-repository-based multiagent framework which focuses on an essential feature of agent system design, i.e., the reuse of existing agents stored in the agent repository. In this paper, we propose an Interactive Design Environment of Agent system called IDEA and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Concept of Symbiotic Computing and its Agent-Based Application to a Ubiquitous Care-Support Service

In this paper, a concept of “symbiotic computing†is formalized to bridge gaps between Real Space (RS) and Digital Space (DS). Symbiotic computing is a post-ubiquitous computing model based on an agent-oriented computing model that introduces social heuristics and cognitive functions into DS to bridge the gaps. The symbiotic functions and agent-based architecture of symbiotic applications are also discussed. Based on the concept, functions, and architecture of symbiotic applications, we develop an agent-based care-support service to enable supervision of persons by their families and friends easily while protecting privacy. In this application system, a hierarchical structure of multi-agents is organized dynamically using heuristics in agents based on the situation of a watched person and watching persons. The system appropriately alters the contents and quality of the live video. The flexible system construction scheme using a multiagent framework facilitates the symbiosis of RS and DS by bridging the gaps in the care-support service domain.

A design of cognitive agents for recognizing real space — towards symbiotic computing —

The growth of the ubiquitous computing and the Web computing is expected to make the internet society more convenient. Furthermore, intelligence of information systems is also expected to make our society safer and more content. The symbiotic computing is a technology to introduce symbiotic relations between users and computing systems by installing a function to recognize the important and relevant aspects in the real space into computing systems, using Ubiquitous computing and Web computing. We have developed various symbiotic applications that have practical use in our society, based on the concept of the symbiotic computing. In this paper, we propose a design of cognitive agents to enhance the cognitive function for symbiotic applications to recognize the real space. We call this cognitive agent as symbiotic agent which is included in our proposed symbiotic functions to establish symbiotic computing.

Design of network management support system based on active information resource

Generally, in order to manage and maintain a network system, it is necessary to carry out a series of operations including assessing the network status, determining the network errors, selecting/approving the countermeasures and applying the countermeasures. Since network systems are becoming more complicated and larger in scale, network operations increasingly require special professional knowledge and effort, thereby imposing heavy workloads on network administrators. In this paper, we propose and design the AIR-NMS (Active Information Resource Architecture based Network Management Support System) for decreasing network administrator workloads.