Agent System Design Research Articles

Goal-Oriented Methodology for Agent System Development

The Goal-Orientation is one of the key features in agent systems. This paper proposes a new methodology for multi-agent system development based on Goal Net model. The methodology covers the whole life cycle of the agent system development, from requirement analysis, architecture design, detailed design to implementation. A Multi-Agent Development Environment (MADE) that facilitates the design and implementation of agent systems is presented. A case study on an agent-based e-learning system developed using the proposed methodology is illustrated in this paper.

Student Perceptions of Engineering Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study

This study examines students' overall perceptions of the engineering profession in a first-year course in engineering, and the effect of a pedagogical approach aimed at exposing students to engineering entrepreneurship and their perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship. The approach featured a market game that engaged a pilot group of 20 students in forming IT companies and competing for the best design of a travel agent system. The rest of the students in the course completed the traditional class project, which involved designing and building a land sailer. A pre-post Likert-type survey designed to measure students' perceptions of the engineering profession was administered to all students enrolled in this course. In addition, a short answer questionnaire seeking students' pedagogical perceptions of the market game and the land sailer project was administered at the end of the course. Results indicated that students' overall perceptions of the engineering profession significantly improved by the end of the course. More importantly, the results indicated that students who participated in the market game had significantly better perceptions of engineering entrepreneurship, specifically professional skills, than students who participated in the land sailer project. These findings are of considerable interest to engineering schools that want to increase student retention and are looking for novel approaches to assist freshmen in choosing their majors.

A Study on the Design of Hospital Medical Examination Support Agent for PDA Application

OBJECTIVE: The bigger the size of order and hospital information of data causes more complex in the communication of each part in the hospital. Various departments such as medical examination, medical examination support, business management and the general management are working a patient medicine, a hospital operation with organic cooperation each other. Medical support departments make efforts that decrease patient examination time and care in the medical information system. METHODS: There are many medical information system. PACS appears one another method about information reception systems in the hospital as a complement of HIS which based on existing message information. In this paper's experiment, agent system practiced patient data and DICOM image of db server in the wireless network. Using PDA, embodies PDA client that makes possible to search and renew the data of db server and embodies hospital managing agent that makes possible to link with PDA to database in the hospital, and designed data format of between server and PDA. RESULTS: This designed system is PDA agent that hospital network supports wireless network. The agent system is appeared important facilities in the hospital which enlarge the chance of the medical benefits to patient delay time. So this system completed proximity of POC(Patient of Care) concept and patient data of DB conformance. This system improved high hospital service of patient. CONCLUSION: Hospital's information environments are expanded and examination's staffs are worked without place, time, convenience. The design of agent systems offers reduction delay time of patient service, medical institution could makes effective and systematic management, so there is a improvement of medical information system in wireless environment. This papers draw a conclusion, there should have working place with equipment and program related to computational system in the hospital. PDA program displays patient data and DICOM image. Doctor and nurse can modify patient's personal information, search patient's information and take care of near patients easily, so we want to improve inadequate treatment recording system of medical members.

RAMASD: a semi-automatic method for designing agent organisations

Designing realistic multi-agent systems is a complex process, which involves specifying not only the functionality of individual agents, but also the authority relationships and lines of communication existing among them. In other words, designing a multi-agent system refers to designing an agent organisation. Existing methodologies follow a wide variety of approaches to designing agent organisations, but they do not provide adequate support for the decisions involved in moving from analysis to design. Instead, they require designers to make ad hoc design decisions while working at a low level of abstraction.We have developed RAMASD (Role Algebraic Multi-Agent System Design), a method for semi-automatic design of agent organisations based on the concept of role models as first-class design constructs. Role models represent agent behaviour, and the design of the agent system is done by systematically allocating roles to agents. The core of this method is a formal model of basic relations between roles, which we call role algebra. The semantics of this role-relationships model are formally defined using a two-sorted algebra.In this paper, we review existing agent system design methodologies to highlight areas where further work is required, describe how our method can address some of the outstanding issues and demonstrate its application to a case study involving telephone repair service teams.

모바일 환경에서 vCard 서비스를 위한 웹 에이전트의 설계 및 구현

vCard는 전통적인 명함 기반의 개인 정보 교환을 위한 전자적인 명함이다. vCard의 정보는 단순한 문자 정보뿐 아니라 그림이나, 회사 로고, 웹 주소와 같은 그래픽과 멀티미디어 같은 정보도 포함한다. 본 논문에서는 일상 생활에서 명함을 교환하듯 휴대폰 환경에서 전자 명함인 vCard를 교환하고 다른 사용자의 vCard를 검색할 수 있는 웹 기반의 vCard 에이전트 시스템을 설계 및 구현하였다. 본 논문에서 제안된 웹 에이전트 시스템은 인터넷을 통해 vCard 서비스를 제공하는 웹 서버에 접속하여 휴대폰의 웹 브라우저로 보여진 vCard 정보를 검색, 편집하고 다른 사용자와 cCard를 교환한다. 또한 휴대폰은 저장 공간이 제한적이라는 점을 고려하여 사용자의 정보를 담고 있는 XML 문서를 웹 서버에 저장하고 cCard를 교환할 때 개인정보나 XMㄴ 문서를 교환하지 않고 XML 문서가 저장되어 있는 암호화된 디렉토리의 이름을 교환하여 잠재적인 보안 문제를 해결하였다. vCard that is the electronic business card automates the exchange of personal information typically found on a traditional business card. vCard information contains not only simple text, but also graphics and multimedia data like pictures, company logos, Web addresses, and so on. This paper describes the design and implementation of Web-based vCard agent system for exchanging vCard, an electronic business card and searching another user's vCard in mobile phone environment. In today's business environment, such as that this information is typically exchanged on business cards. Our web agent system in this paper connect web server which provide vCard service and search, edit vCard information displayed by web browser of mobile phone and exchange vCard with another user through internet. Considering characteristics of wireless devices that have limited storage space, It also saves constructed XML documents that include user's informations in a web server and solves the security problem by exchanging not personal data or XML but encrypted directory name where XML document exits as exchanging vcard.

SMART mobile agent facility

With ever growing use of Internet for electronic commerce and data mining type applications there seems to be a need for new network computing paradigms that can overcome the barriers posed by network congestion and unreliability. Mobile agent programming is a paradigm that enables the programs to move from one host to another, do the processing locally and return results asynchronously. In this paper, we present the design and development of a mobile agent system that will provide a platform for developing mobile applications that are Mobile Agent Facility (MAF) specification compliant. We start by exploring mobile agent technology and establish its merits with respect to the client–server technology. Next, we introduce a concept called dynamic aggregation to improve the performance of mobile agent applications. We, then focus on the design and implementation issues of our system, Scalable, Mobile and Reliable Technology (SMART), which is based on the MAF specification.

Role modeling for agent system analysis, design, and implementation

Until now, the lack of adequate formalisms and the corresponding abstractions in software have made it difficult to realize traditional role representations in automated systems. Role models, a relatively new concept in object oriented software engineering, emphasize patterns of interaction. The article shows how role modeling can facilitate agent system analysis and design.

Mobile Software Agents — Insect-Inspired Computing

Agents need resources and protection from hostile influences, in both natural and artificial environments. This paper specifically considers social insects and software mobile agent systems, in order to understand how the need for mobility, resource acquisition and security can influence the design and operation of agent systems. Evolution has honed the movement, resource-gathering and defensive skills of the social insects in a multitude of ways. The paper reviews some of these strategies and assesses whether they may provide useful insights into the design and implementation of mobile software agents. This process is necessary as current mobile agent systems have been handicapped by a lack of convincing security measures which has prevented their adoption in mainstream computing services.This paper therefore examines the strategies for movement, resource acquisition and defence adopted by the social insects and considers how they may be applied to enhance the design of mobile agents.

Role Models — Patterns of Agent System Analysis and Design

Due to their autonomy and social behaviour, agents will play important roles in emerging enterprises; they will fill key positions and provide essential capabilities. This paper describes role modelling as a software engineering technique for specifying, analysing, and designing systems on the basis of the roles that the agents will play. This paper builds on our earlier research in patterns of agent systems. A pattern is a useful solution to a reoccurring problem in a particular context; patterns can be used to solve software engineering problems in analysis, design, and implementation. This paper explains how object-oriented role models can be extended to represent patterns of agent interaction that can then be employed to engineer agent systems. Role theory deals with collaboration and co-ordination. Roles have also been applied to distributed systems management, and to agent and robot systems. However, there has to date not been a methodology for realising these representations in an automated or semi-automated system, due to the lack of adequate formalism and corresponding abstractions in software. Role models rectify this situation for software analysis, design, and implementation.

Design issues in mobile agent programming systems

The article discusses system-level issues and agent programming requirements that arise in the design of mobile agent systems. The authors describe several mobile agent systems to illustrate different approaches designers have taken in addressing these challenges. The following areas are discussed: agent mobility, naming, security issues, privacy and integrity, authentication, authorization and access control, metering and charging mechanisms, programming primitives, agent communication and synchronization primitives, agent monitoring and control primitives, and fault tolerance primitives.