CMSC 691M Agent Architectures

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CMSC 691MAgent Architectures Multi-Agent
Systems

• UMBCProf. Marie desJardins
• Spring 2002

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Course information

• Prof desJardins
• ECS 216, x53967, mariedj_at_cs.umbc.edu
• TA Gunjan Kalra
• gkalra1_at_cs.umbc.edu
• Class mailing list
• cs691m_at_listproc.umbc.edu
• To subscribe, send email to listproc_at_listproc.umbc
  .edu with the line
• subscribe cs691m 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
• Reading summaries (15 plus bonus points)
• Class participation (20)
• Discussion leaders (5)
• Note takers (5)

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Class structure Agent architecture project

• Midterm paper/project 25 of grade
• Compare two architectures
• Investigate in more depth than in class
• Can download software, do extra reading, try
  implementing part of the architecture,
• Proposal due Feb. 21 (5 of paper)
• Draft due Mar. 14 (40 of paper)
• Review due Apr. 2 (5 of class)
• Final draft due Apr. 11 (55 of paper)

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Class structure MAS project

• Agent to participate in multi-agent environment
• Most likely domains TAC or RoboCup
• Domain presentation will be given on March 14
• Dry run opportunity on May 7
• Tournament and papers/presentations at time final
  exam is scheduled

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Policies

• Grading and academic honesty grading.ps
• Plagiarism, citations

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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
• NO reading summary this time, but you should come
  with some additional questions of your own
• Questions for Day 2
• Characterize todays exercise in terms of the
  agent characteristics on page 4
• When is something an agent, and when is it just a
  piece of software? Is there any difference?
• Is it worth having agents that arent
  intelligent agents?
• What do you want to get out of this class? What
  part of the syllabus are you most excited about?
  Least excited?