CS699:  Multi-Agent Systems Design

 

Course Number:    CS699

Course Title:          Special Topics – Multi Agent Systems Design

Instructor: Arun Sood

Office Phone:        703-993-1524

Office Hours:         Monday           3:30 to 4:15 PM
                                    Wednesday      3:30 to 4:15 PM

E-mail:     asood@gmu.edu. 

Messages must include CS673 as the first 5 characters of  the Subject line. Generally e-mail is good for clarifying or confirming information.  I  prefer short and precise messages, and you can expect similar responses.  If you find that the reply is too terse, and requires clarification - do not hesitate to see the instructor.  If you require more details, a face to face meeting is strongly recommended.  E-mail is not a substitute for face to face meetings.

 

Course Content

This course is an out growth of research funded by NIMA - one student is building a prototype system and details about it are at aiga.cs.gmu.edu.  Though the domain of the research project was on imaging and geospatial computing, the system incorporates clustering and text processing agents, in additions to image processing agents.  In the class we will discuss the technologies that enabled us to build this system. 

 

In the course we will cover a variety of topics that apply to the building of agent based systems.  Many of the ideas (papers and references) can be traced to Distributed AI.  We will explore a broad range of topics, and these topics are based on developments in DAI, Distributed Computing Systems, Reuse, Databases, Information Retrieval, and Networking.  Guest lecturers will cover some of the topics, e.g. Professor G. Tecuci will lecture on Learning Agents.

 

A reading list is attached below, and this is being augmented to reflect the breadth of the topics that we plan to cover.

 

Example topics are:

 

1.      Introduction:  Software Agents - definitions, applications, overall architecture, role of ontologies, Agent Communication Languages (ACL).

 

2.      Semantic Web, info bots.

 

3.      Peer-to-peer (agent-to-agent) computing:  Gnutella, Morpheus, gossiping models, regions of influence, small world model.

 

4.      Ontologies, ACL.

 

5.      KQML, FIPA, DAML-S

 

6.      Text Categorization.

 

7.      Agent discovery - IR principles (precision/recall), clustering techniques - centralized/distributed.

 

8.      Distributed system platforms - CORBA, JINI

 

9.      Agent collaboration and cooperation: teams.

 

1.      Learning agents – guest lecture by Professor G. Tecuci.

 

2.      Other enabling technology - XML, networking principles QoS, multicasting, signaling (alerts)

 

3.      Case studies/projects

 

Projects: 

 

To be discussed in the first class.

 

Honor Code

Honor Code procedures will be strictly adhered. Students are required to be familiar with the honor code. You must not utilize unauthorized material or consultation in responding to your tests. Violations of the honor code will be reported. Unless otherwise stated, homework assignments must be based on the student’s own effort.

Please be sure that you are aware of all provisions of the GMU Honor Code
http://jiju.gmu.edu/catalog/apolicies/honor.html
http://www.cs.gmu.edu/honor-code.

MEMO Email Information

Students received Memo email accounts on August 20, 2001. Here are some relevant links, provided by Susan Campbell of the GMU Instructional Resource Center.

How to Activate Your Memo Mail Account Using the Web Client

How to Set Up Automatic Forwarding on Your Memo Mail Account

Using the GMU MEMO E-mail from the WWW (new system)

Information about labs

 

Reference Texts

 

* Gerhard Weiss (Editor), “Multiagent Systems”, MIT Press, 2000 (Paperback Edition).

 

Michael Woolridge, Michael J. Wooldridge, “Introduction to MultiAgent Systems”, John Wiley, 2002 (Paperback).

 

Reference List:

 

Books:

 

“Understanding Agent Systems”, Ed. by Mark D'Inverno and Michael Luck, Springer, 2001.

 

Dieter Fensel, “Ontologies: A Silver Bullet for Knowledge Management and Electronic Commerce”, Springer, 2001.

 

* Nicholas R. Jennings and Michael J. Woolridge (Eds), “Agent Technology – Foundations, Applications, and Markets”, Springer, 1998

 

* F. Dignum and C. Sierra (Eds), “ Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce – The European AgnetLink Perspective”, Springer 2001.

 

* M. Klusch (Ed), “Intelligent Information Agents – Agent – Based Information Discovery and Management on the Internet”, Springer 1999.

 

* J. Liu, N. Zhong, Y. Y. Tang, P. S. P. Wang, (Eds), “Agent Engineering”, World Scientific, 2001.

 

Journals, Conference Proceedings, Web sites

 

* J. Liu, and N. Zhong, (Eds), “Intelligent Agent Technology – Systems Methodologies and Tools”, Proc of the 1st Asia-Pacific Conference on IAT, World Scientific, 1999.

 

N. Zhong, J. Liu, S. Ohsuga, J. Bradshaw, (Eds),  “Intelligent Agent Technology – Research and Development”, Proc of the 2nd Asia-Pacific Conference on IAT, World Scientific, 2001.

 

* T. Wagner and O. Rana, (Eds.), “Infrastructure for Agents, Mult-Agent Systems, and Scalable Multi-Agent Systems,” International Workshop on Infrastructure for Scalable Multi-Agents Systems, Barcelona, Spain, Springer, June 2000, Revised Papers.

 

* C. Zhang and D. Lukose, (Eds), Multi-Agent Systems – Theories, Languages and Applications, 4th Autralian Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Brisbane, Australia, Springer, 1998 (Selected Papers).

 

http://agents.umbc.edu, Edited by Tim Finin & Yannis Labrou.

 

http://www.liacs.nl/CS/DLT/#research  Edited by Doug DeGroot.

 

F. Sebastiani, “Machine learning in automated text categorization”, ACM Computing Surveys, 2002

 

David Kotz and Robert S. Gray, “Mobile Agents and the Future of the Internet”, ACM Operating Systems Review, 33(3), August 1999, pages 7-13.

 

J. Hendler, Is There an Intelligent Agent in Your Future?, Nature, 11 Mar1999. 

 

T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler and Ora Lassila, “Semantic Web”, Scientific American, May 2001.

 

W. Wayt Gibbs, “Autonomic Computing”, Scientific American, May 2002.

 

Kendall Grant Clark, “If Ontology, Then Knowledge: Catching Up With WebOnt”, xml.com, May 2002.

C. B. Smith, “In Search of Blessed Bots”, Library Journal, April 2002.

 

Sprint and intelligent agents  (BBC online article 22 April 2002).