Science and Technology of Agreement

El próximo mes de junio se celebra en Barcelona el workshop internacional Science and Technology of Agreement. Son los días 19 y 20, así que me coincide con el congreso de Ibiza sobre Metaversos.  Lástima que la superposición cuántica no funcione para personas ni para gatos. Esta vez me toca elegir, aunque trataré de estar al menos el primer día en Barcelona. Más información:

EUMAS07. Session 7 and 8 (and final)

Well, it’s Friday afternoon and these are the latest sessions of EUMAS. None of them are specially interesting for me.

Session 7 is about simulation.
The two first articles are presented by a third person, not by their authors. And the last author hasn’t appeared yet. It seems that they are simulated authors too :-D

It begins with an article about simulation with virtual lanes for motorcycles simulation, trough microscopic simulation. The problem of current approaches is that they assume that motorcycles rides in the middle of a lane. I’ve never seen a cycle been driven like that ;-) and so do they, so they plan a more realistic scene, in which the cycle can change the lanes and uses the road marking as valid paths. That is: they are driven as motorcycles. In their proposal, each vehicle is an agent and the traffic is just an emergent behaviour of the multiagent system. Usually, only road is used, but in cases of dense traffic, all free space is used. This «new» free spaces for cycles are the virtual lanes (VLs). VLs can be authorised or forbidden depending on the position of the rest of vehicles (due to their proximity to the limits of the actual lane).Several rules to model the behaviour of the cycles are proposed (to pass on the left, to drive in the widest lane and so on).They need a deeper validation to compare with real data in the behaviour of traffic conditions and individual driver’s behaviour, and to simulate complex situations, as junctions.

Now it’s Elena’s turn, with the Gus’s paper Intelligent Agents in Serious Games. After the introduction, it classifies the different approaches in four types:

  • agent-centered, in which the agent is the main element. Used in cases as virtual population or mimicking human users.
  • abstract agents, where the global systems is the most important and it emerges from the interactions. Examples are polkitical and social act simulation (as wars)
  • agent and network topologies, where the topology of the network is the most important and the agents are merely resources.
  • full approach, a mixture of the three previous approaches.

The problem is that there is not an agent model common for all these approaches so,tachaaaan, we propose our unified agent model for serious game: Spade (see references). A couple of questions, but Elena can’t answer them, so they will be redirected to garanda {at} dsic.upv.es X-D

The third author is virtual already, so we’ve finished.

Session 8. Metodologies and Tools

I’ve arrived late to the first one, but it sounds a bit rare. I haven’t understood their purpose: testing agents for bugs in their codification? I’m not sure.

The second one is about security in mobile agent systems for open environment. Current solutions, as DNS or FIPA-AMS are not usefull. Agent location service requires to be efficient, by dealin with dynamic information and to be scalable, and to be secure. And they are looking for a model that provide transparent location for agents. They’ve consider several alternatives–(de)centralised, hierarchical/P2P– The solution is a Fonkey-based location server. The idea is that every information have to be signed. It is a platform to provide secure communications for agent platforms. May be is what we get with Kerberos for Magentix (some how). At the end, he recognises that send packages in DHT is expensive.

Now is Jose Miguel’s turn with Magentix. Only sockets can be used to communicate processes in different machines, so the efficiency of communication among agents depends on the efficiency of socket management. Comparing Java with TCP-based pure communication, the former is clearly the loser (obviuos). After that, he continues explaining the Magentix agent platform and its performance. Any questions? Yes. The first one is about the scalability of AMS, because white pages are all replicated in all hosts. Other question is that we’re are making platform dependent something that is platform independent. And a pair of questions more. A lot of criticism; I guess that Magentix hasn’t convinced.

The last paper is about a methodology called ASEME. The analyse the systems using capabilities and functionalities., The design phase models the intra-agent and inter-agent control. The design phase ends with a platform independent model (PIM) and uses PSMs in the implementation phase (I have to review again our MDA-based proposal). Till now, it is just another methodology. I think that agent community needs a common methodology (as UML for OOP) and its own high level language. I’m bored of different methodologies (our own methodologies are included). Something interesting is the use of statecharts for representing protocols, because its more important to establish the activities that the agent have to do when a message arrives. Furthermore, it can be easily linked with the rest of agent activities.

Some that I have to read is something about SPEM. It seems to be a notation to describe the different phases of a methodology. Maybe it will be interesting for Thomas.

Well, and here finishes the 5th European Conference on Multiagent Systems. I’ll summarise the conference in one last post.

Greetings from Hammamet.

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EUMAS07. Session 5 and 6

Good morning. Another day in EUMAS, after a stressing dinner. I’ll talk about that, because now its time to work. The topics for today are not specially interesting for me.

Session 5. Semantic Web and e-commerce

Semantic Alignment of Agent Interactions trough the Communication Protocol explores how to use semantical alignment using communication as a complement to other techniques. They assume that (i) all agents participate in the same kind of interaction, (ii) they’re in the same state on the transaction. Interesting, but a bit immature.

And the last author has disappeared. This is becoming a disgusting costume in the EUMAS. I haven’t seen the semantic web nor the e-commerce anywhere. A little deception.

Now its time for a coffee, see you later.

Session 6. Logical Model

A hard (a very hard) session for me. This is the kind of papers that I’d like to write when I get old. I haven’t anything to write. Just to see, to listen and to try to understand something. One more thing: I need a LaTeX plugin for wordpress. I’ll add that to the todo list.

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