CMSC 491M/691M Agent Architectures and Multi-Agent Systems

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CMSC 491M/691MAgent Architectures
andMulti-Agent Systems

• UMBCProf. Marie desJardins
• Spring 2003

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Course information

• Prof desJardins
• ECS 216, x53967, mariedj_at_cs.umbc.edu
• Class mailing list
• agents-class_at_listproc.umbc.edu
• To subscribe, send email to listproc_at_listproc.umbc
  .edu with the line
• subscribe agents-class Your Name

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Todays overview

• Class structure and policies
• Whats an agent?
• Agent exercise
• Next class

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Class structure Syllabus

• Course page cmsc691m.html
• Course syllabus schedule.html

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Class structure Participation

• This is a discussion class
• Reading must be done in advance
• Participation countsa lot
• 45 of grade is related to class participation
• Class discussion (35)
• Do you attend class?
• Are you prepared? Have you done the reading?
  Have you thought about the discussion questions?
• Do you contribute to the discussion with
  insightful questions and comments?
• Reading journal (5)
• Discussion leaders (5)

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Class structure Agent architecture project

• Agent architecture project 25 of grade
• Download one of the architectures we learn about
• Apply the architecture to a domain of your choice
• Deadlines
• Proposal due Feb. 19 (5 of project grade)
• Report due Mar. 19 (70 of grade)
• Demonstration week of Mar. 17 (25 of grade)

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Class structure MAS paper/project

• Agent architecture project 25 of grade
• Open-ended Can be an implementation project or a
  final paper studying a topic in more depth
• Deadlines
• Proposal and bibliography due Apr. 14 (10)
• Draft report due May 5 (5)
• Presentation on May 7 or May 12 (20)
• Final report due May 16 (65)
• You will also review another students report
  this review will be worth 5 of your class grade

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Policies

• Grading and academic honesty
• Plagiarism, citations

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Plagiarism exercise

• Original passage
• I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
  States of America, and to the republic for which
  it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty
  and justice for all.
• Unacceptable summary
• I promise loyalty to the United States flag, and
  to the country for which it stands, one nation,
  with freedom and fairness for all.

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Plagiarism exercise II

• Original passage
• I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
  States of America, and to the republic for which
  it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty
  and justice for all.
• Acceptable summary
• I promise to be loyal to the United States flag
  and to the USA itself One united country that
  provides basic rights such as liberty and justice
  to all citizens.

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Whats an agent?

• Weiss, p. 29 after Wooldridge and Jennings
• An agent is a computer system that is situated
  in some environment, and that is capable of
  autonomous action in this environment in order to
  meet its design objectives.
• Russell and Norvig, p. 7
• An agent is just something that perceives and
  acts.
• Rosenschein and Zlotkin, p. 4
• The more complex the considerations that a
  machine takes into account, the more justified we
  are in considering our computer an agent, who
  acts as our surrogate in an automated encounter.

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Whats an agent? II

• Ferber, p. 9
• An agent is a physical or virtual entity
• Which is capable of acting in an environment,
• Which can communicate directly with other agents,
• Which is driven by a set of tendencies,
• Which possesses resources of its own,
• Which is capable of perceiving its environment,
• Which has only a partial representation of this
  environment,
• Which possesses skills and can offer services,
• Which may be able to reproduce itself,
• Whose behavior tends towards satisfying its
  objectives, taking account of the resources and
  skills available to it and depending on its
  perception, its representations and the
  communications it receives.

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OK, so whats an environment?

• Isnt any system that has inputs and outputs
  situated in an environment of sorts?

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Whats autonomy, anyway?

• Jennings and Wooldridge, p. 4
• In contrast with objects, we think of agents
  as encapsulating behavior, in addition to state.
  An object does not encapsulate behavior it has
  no control over the execution of methods if an
  object x invokes a method m on an object y, then
  y has no control over whether m is executed or
  not it just is. In this sense, object y is not
  autonomous, as it has no control over its own
  actions. Because of this distinction, we do not
  think of agents as invoking methods (actions) on
  agents rather, we tend to think of them
  requesting actions to be performed. The decision
  about whether to act upon the request lies with
  the recipient.
• Is an if-then-else statement sufficient to create
  autonomy?

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So now what?

• If those definitions arent useful, is there a
  useful definition? Should we bother trying to
  create agents at all?

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Agent exercise

• Pick a card, any card

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After-action reviewor post-mortem, as the case
may be

• Did the class (agent community) find a consistent
  solution?
• How many agents had an instantiation?
• How many constraints were violated?
• Why those ones? Any theories?
• Whats hard about this problem?

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Next class

• Reading Weiss Prologue and Chapter 1