MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS

Reference

[1] Michael Wooldridge, An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, Second Edition, 2009 [2] R.H. Bordini, J.F.Hubner, M. Wooldridge, Programming multiagent systems in AgentSpeak using Jason, 2007.

Outline

Background Agent Environment Architecture for Agents

Reading: Chapter 1&2, [1]

Background

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI)

Subfield of AI Development of distributed solutions for complex problems problem that is beyond the capability of an individual problem solver Two mainstreams
Distributed prolem solving (DPS) MultiAgent systems (MAS)

Background

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI)

Two mainstreams

Distributed prolem solving (DPS)

Centralized Control, Distributed Data Distributed Control, Distributed Data

MultiAgent systems (MAS)

a system comprising several agents that live and interact in the same environment.

Outline

Background Agent Environment Architecture for Agents

Example

Cleaning robot Gold miners

What is an Agent?

There is no universally accepted definition of the term Agent There is a general consensus that autonomy is central to the notion of agency. Difficulty is that various attributes associated with agency are of diffening importance for different domains.
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What is an Agent?

Autonomy:

capable of acting independently, exhibiting control over their internal state

Thus: an agent is a computer system capable of autonomous action in some environment in order to meet its design objectives
SYSTEM input ENVIRONMENT
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output

What is an Agent?

An agent in its environment

Environment Actions

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What is an Agent?

In most domain of reasonable complexity, an agent will not have complete control over its environment. It will have at best partial control, in that it can influence it.

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What is an Agent?

Trivial (non-interesting) agents:

Thermostat
Have a sensor for detecting room temperature Two signals: too low, and OK Available actions: heating on , and heating off Rules:

Too cold heating on Temperature Ok heating off

When the door of the room is close? guaranteed effects When the door of the room is open?

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What is an Agent?

An intelligent agent is a computer system capable of flexible autonomous action in some environment By flexible, we mean:

reactive pro-active social

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Reactivity

If a programs environment is guaranteed to be fixed, the program need never worry about its own success or failure program just executes blindly

Example of fixed environment: compiler

The real world is not like that: things change, information is incomplete. Many (most?) interesting environments are dynamic
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Reactivity

A reactive system is one that maintains an ongoing interaction with its environment, and responds to changes that occur in it (in time for the response to be useful)

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Proactiveness

we generally want agents to do things for us goal directed behavior Pro-activeness = generating and attempting to achieve goals; not driven solely by events; taking the initiative Recognizing opportunities
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Social Ability

The real world is a multi-agent environment: we cannot go around attempting to achieve goals without taking others into account Some goals can only be achieved with the cooperation of others Social ability in agents is the ability to interact with other agents (and possibly humans) via some kind of agent-communication language, and perhaps cooperate with others

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Outline

Background Agent Environment Abstract Architecture for Agents

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Environments Accessible vs. inaccessible

An accessible environment is one in which the agent can obtain complete, accurate, up-to-date information about the environments state Most moderately complex environments (including, for example, the everyday physical world and the Internet) are inaccessible

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Environments Accessible vs. inaccessible

The more accessible an environment is, the simpler it is to build agents to operate in it Example:

a vacuum agent with only a local dirt sensor cannot tell whether there is dirt in other squares, an automated taxi cannot see what other drivers are thinking
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Environments Deterministic vs. non-deterministic

A deterministic environment is one in which any action has a single guaranteed effect there is no uncertainty about the state that will result from performing an action

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Environments Deterministic vs. non-deterministic

Example:

The vacuum world as we described it is deterministic, but variations can include stochastic elements such as randomly appearing dirt and an unreliable suction mechanism Taxi driving is clearly non-deterministic in this sense, because one can never predict the behavior of traffic exactly; moreover, one's tires blow out and one's engine seizes up without warning
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Environments Static vs. dynamic

A static environment is one that can be assumed to remain unchanged except by the performance of actions by the agent A dynamic environment is one that has other processes operating on it, and which hence changes in ways beyond the agents control

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Environments Static vs. dynamic

Other processes can interfere with the agents actions (as in concurrent systems theory) The physical world is a highly dynamic environment Example:

Taxi driving is clearly dynamic Crossword puzzles are static

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Environments Discrete vs. continuous

An environment is discrete if there are a fixed, finite number of actions and percepts in it Russell and Norvig give a chess game as an example of a discrete environment, and taxi driving as an example of a continuous one

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Environments Discrete vs. continuous

Example:

a discrete-state environment such as a chess game has a finite number of distinct states. Chess also has a discrete set of percepts and actions. Taxi driving is a continuous- state and continuous-time problem: the speed and location of the taxi and of the other vehicles sweep through a range of continuous values and do so smoothly over time.
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Outline

Background Agent Environment Abstract Architecture for Agents

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Architecture for Agents

Logic-Based Architectures

Reactive Architectures BDI Architectures Layered Architectures (Hybrid)

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BDI Architectures

BDI = Belief Desire - Intention Beliefs:

information the agent has about world states of affairs that the agent, in an ideal world, would wish to be brought about desires that the agent has committed to achieving

Desires:

Intentions

Belief-Desire-Intention

Environment
sense belief revision act

Beliefs

generate options

Desires

filter

Intentions

BDI model implementation

Beliefs -- > prolog like facts Desires and intentions are realized from plan library Plans achieve some state of affairs A plan has body and invocation condition The agent picks one desires and puts it on execution stack Execution stack are intentions

Example

Cleaning agent