Ontology Based Multi Agent Systems

During the last two decades, the idea of Semantic Web has received a great deal of attention. An extensive body of knowledge has emerged to describe technologies that seek to help us create and use aspects of the Semantic Web. Ontology and agent-based technologies are understood to be the two important technologies here. A large number of articles and a number of books exist to describe the use individually of the two technologies and the design of systems that use each of these technologies individually, but little focus has been given on how one can - sign systems that carryout integrated use of the two different technologies. In this book we describe ontology and agent-based systems individually, and highlight advantages of integration of the two different and complementary te- nologies. We also present a methodology that will guide us in the design of the - tegrated ontology-based multi-agent systems and illustrate this methodology on two use cases from the health and software engineering domain. This book is organized as follows: • Chapter I, Current issues and the need for ontologies and agents, describes existing problems associated with uncontrollable information overload and explains how ontologies and agent-based systems can help address these - sues. • Chapter II, Introduction to multi-agent systems, defines agents and their main characteristics and features including mobility, communications and collaboration between different agents. It also presents different types of agents on the basis of classifications done by different authors.

The volume aims at providing a comprehensive review of the diverse efforts covering the gap existing between the two main perspectives on the topic of ontologies for multi-agent systems, namely: How ontologies should be modelled and represented in order to be effectively used in agent systems, and on the other hand, what kind of capabilities should be exhibited by an agent in order to make use of ontological knowledge and to perform efficient reasoning with it. The volume collects the most significant papers of the AAMAS 2002 and AAMAS 2003 workshop on ontologies for agent systems, and the EKAW 2002 workshop on ontologies for multi-agent systems.

Learn how to employ JADE to build multi-agent systems! JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment framework) is a middleware for the development of applications, both in the mobile and fixed environment, based on the Peer-to-Peer intelligent autonomous agent approach. JADE enables developers to implement and deploy multi-agent systems, including agents running on wireless networks and limited-resource devices. Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE is a practical guide to using JADE. The text will give an introduction to agent technologies and the JADE Platform, before proceeding to give a comprehensive guide to programming with JADE. Basic features such as creating agents, agent tasks, agent communication, agent discovery and GUIs are covered, as well as more advanced features including ontologies and content languages, complex behaviours, interaction protocols, agent mobility, and the in-process interface. Issues such as JADE internals, running JADE agents on mobile devices, deploying a fault tolerant JADE platform, and main add-ons are also covered in depth. Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE: Comprehensive guide to using JADE to build multi-agent systems and agent orientated programming. Describes and explains ontologies and content language, interaction protocols and complex behaviour. Includes material on persistence, security and a semantics framework. Contains numerous examples, problems, and illustrations to enhance learning. Presents a case study demonstrating the use of JADE in practice. Offers an accompanying website with additional learning resources such as sample code, exercises and PPT-slides. This invaluable resource will provide multi-agent systems practitioners, programmers working in the software industry with an interest on multi-agent systems as well as final year undergraduate and postgraduate students in CS and advanced networking and telecoms courses with a comprehensive guide to using JADE to employ multi agent systems. With contributions from experts in JADE and multi agent technology.

This book constitutes revised, selected, and invited papers from the 4th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, EMAS 2016, held in Singapore, in May 2016, in conjunction with AAMAS. The 10 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The book also contains 2 invited papers; extended versions of AAMAS 2016 demonstration abstracts. EMAS deals with MAS software engineering processes, methodologies and techniques; Programming languages for MAS; Formal methods and declarative technologies for the specification, validation and verification of MAS; and development tools.

Conceptual Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems proposes the methodology and engineering environment CoMoMAS for the development of multi-agent systems. CoMoMAS is among the most elaborated and most often cited multi-agent development approaches available in the field. Its originality is to address the issue of the development of multi-agent systems (MAS) from a knowledge engineering perspective, which means that agents are seen as interacting entities having different kinds of knowledge, which is to be identified during development. Knowledge has played an important role for MAS development in the past, but CoMoMAS makes a step further in proposing a complete set of conceptual models and a solid methodology to guide the overall development process of a MAS-from design to validation. Conceptual Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems is an excellent reference for both researchers and practitioners in the broad area of distributed systems development. This book is of particular value from the point of view of computer science, including knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence, agent and multi-agent technology, and software engineering.

The study of multi-agent systems (MAS) focuses on systems in which many intelligent agents interact with each other. These agents are considered to be autonomous entities such as software programs or robots. Their interactions can either be cooperative (for example as in an ant colony) or selfish (as in a free market economy). This book assumes only basic knowledge of algorithms and discrete maths, both of which are taught as standard in the first or second year of computer science degree programmes. A basic knowledge of artificial intelligence would useful to help understand some of the issues, but is not essential. The book’s main aims are: To introduce the student to the concept of agents and multi-agent systems, and the main applications for which they are appropriate To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of intelligent agents To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of a multi-agent society To introduce a number of typical applications for agent technology After reading the book the student should understand: The notion of an agent, how agents are distinct from other software paradigms (e.g. objects) and the characteristics of applications that lend themselves to agent-oriented software The key issues associated with constructing agents capable of intelligent autonomous action and the main approaches taken to developing such agents The key issues in designing societies of agents that can effectively cooperate in order to solve problems, including an understanding of the key types of multi-agent interactions possible in such systems The main application areas of agent-based systems

The field of agent and multi-agent systems is concerned with the development and evaluation of sophisticated, AI-based, problem solving and control architectures for both single and multi-agent systems. This book presents the proceedings of the 7th KES Conference on Agent and Multi-agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2013), held in Hue City, Vietnam, in May 2013. The KES-AMSTA 2013 conference provides an internationally respected forum for scientific research in the technologies and applications of agent and multi-agent systems. In all, 44 papers were selected for oral presentation and publication in this volume. Special attention is paid to the feature topics of intelligent technologies and applications in the area of e-health, social networking, self-organizing systems, economics and trust management. Other topics covered include: agent oriented software engineering; beliefs engineering; desires and intentions representation; agent cooperation, coordination, negotiation, organization and communication; distributed problem-solving; specification of agent communication languages; formalization of ontologies; and conversational agents. The book highlights new trends and challenges in agent and multi-agent research, and will be of interest to the research community working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, robotics, dialogue systems and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies and applications.