Sharing common goals and acting cooperatively are critical issues in multiagent teamwork. Traditionally, agents cooperate with each other by inferring others' actions implicitly or explicitly, based on established norms for behavior or on knowledge about the preferences or interests of others. This kind of cooperation either requires that agents share a large amount of knowledge about the teamwork, which is unrealistic in a distributed team, or requires high-frequency message exchange, which weakens teamwork efficiency, especially for a team that may involve human members. In this research, we designed and developed a new approach called Proactive Communication, which helps to produce realistic behavior and interactions for multiagent teamwork. We emphasize that multi-agent teamwork is governed by the same principles that underlie human cooperation. Psychological studies of human teamwork have shown that members of an effective team often anticipate the needs of other members and choose to assist them proactively. Human team members are also naturally capable of observing the environment and others so they can establish certain parameters for performing actions without communicating with others. Proactive Communication endows agents with observabilities and enables agents use them to track others’ mental states. Additionally, Proactive Communication uses statistical analysis of the information production and need of team members and uses these data to capture the complex, interdependent decision processes between information needer and provider. Since not all these data are known, we use their expected values with respect to a dynamic estimation of distributions. The approach was evaluated by running several sets of experiments on a Multi- Agent Wumpus World application. The results showed that endowing agents with observability decreased communication load as well as enhanced team performance. The results also showed that with the support of dynamic distributions, estimation, and decision-theoretic modeling, teamwork efficiency were improved.

The concept of knowledge management has become a critical issue in both academic and practical area. Organizations invest huge resources in knowledge management work in order to maintain long term competitive advantage. Therefore, how to use information technology to support knowledge management in an efficient way is a critical success factor in organizations adopting knowledge management. However, the running effect of knowledge management system does not achieve organizations¡¦ expectancy. The main reason is that knowledge management system is designed for unstable form of knowledge; developing information system in a structural way can not process this abstract knowledge effectively. For the reason, this research applies intelligent agent technique in developing knowledge management system, hoping to make use of intelligent agents¡¦ autonomy, communication ability, adaptability and mobility to raise the efficiency of knowledge management. This research analysis the general knowledge management works in order to find out the general knowledge management requirements. And then, this research also checks which requirements are suitable for intelligent agent to process. After integrating these requirements, this research proposes a complete intelligent agent based knowledge management system framework and a detail definition of each intelligent agent, and a set of message communication protocols between these intelligent agents.

Multiagent simulation is gaining popularity due to its intuitiveness and ability in coping with domain complexity. HLA, being a distributed simulation architecture standard, is a good candidate for implementing a multiagent simulation infrastructure on, provided that agent communication can be implemented. HLA, being a standard designed towards a wide coverage of simulation system architectures and styles, is not an easy system to master. In this thesis, an abstraction layer called the Federate Abstraction Layer (FAL) is described for better engineering of software systems participating in an HLA simulation, providing lower project risks for the project manager and ease of use for the C++ programmers. The FAL is in use in project SAVMOS in Modelling and Simulation Laboratory. Discussion of FAL is followed by discussion of the study for realizing KQML for use in multiagent architectures to be built on top of HLA as the data transfer medium. The results are demonstrated with 10 federates implemented using the FAL.

The purpose of this project is the exploration of how autonomous robots could develop a language to communicate visual patterns. The idea is that each robot should be able to change their visual appearance depending on what its neighbors are trying to communicate. Thus, the robots should `talk' about their patterns, trying to influence each other. For this project we used the e-Puck robot, a small mobile robot developed by EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique F\'{e}d\'{e}rale de Lausanne) in conjunction with the see-Puck display. The display, developed by FAL (Future Applications Lab), consists of a matrix of 148 LEDs in a circular shape. During this project we looked into several methods of achieving communication though the sensors and actuators of the e-Puck robot. An additional area which was explored was the process of user interaction with the robots.

The increasing number of network security related incidents has made it necessary for the organizations to actively protect their sensitive data with network intrusion detection systems (IDSs). Detecting intrusion in a distributed network from outside network segment as well as from inside is a difficult problem. IDSs are expected to analyze a large volume of data while not placing a significant added load on the monitoring systems and networks. This requires good data mining strategies which take less time and give accurate results. In this study, a novel hybrid layered multiagent-based intrusion detection system is created, particularly with the support of a multi-class supervised classification technique. In agent-based IDS, there is no central control and therefore no central point of failure. Agents can detect and take predefined actions against malicious activities, which can be detected with the help of data mining techniques. The proposed IDS shows superior performance compared to central sniffing IDS techniques, and saves network resources compared to other distributed IDSs with mobile agents that activate too many sniffers causing bottlenecks in the network. This is one of the major motivations to use a distributed model based on a multiagent platform along with a supervised classification technique. Applying multiagent technology to the management of network security is a challenging task since it requires the management on different time instances and has many interactions. To facilitate information exchange between different agents in the proposed hybrid layered multiagent architecture, a low cost and low response time agent communication protocol is developed to tackle the issues typically associated with a distributed multiagent system, such as poor system performance, excessive processing power requirement, and long delays. The bandwidth and response time performance of the proposed end-to-end system is investigated through the simulation of the proposed agent communication protocol on our private LAN testbed called Hierarchical Agent Network for Intrusion Detection Systems (HAN-IDS). The simulation results show that this system is efficient and extensible since it consumes negligible bandwidth with low cost and low response time on the network.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19110号 / 情博第556号 / 新制||情||98(附属図書館) / 32061 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 西田 豊明, 教授 乾 敏郎, 教授 河原 達也 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DGAM

In this thesis, new algorithms for formation control of multi agent systems (MAS) based on continuum mechanics principles will be investigated. For this purpose agents of the MAS are treated as particles in a continuum, evolving in an n-D space, whose desired configuration is required to satisfy an admissible deformation function. Considered is a specific class of mappings that is called homogenous where the Jacobian of the mapping is only a function of time and is not spatially varying. The primary objectives of this thesis are to develop the necessary theory and its validation via simulation on a mobile-agent based swarm test bed that includes two primary tasks: 1) homogenous transformation of MAS and 2) deployment of a random distribution of agents on to a desired configuration. Developed will be a framework based on homogenous transformations for the evolution of a MAS in an n-D space (n=1, 2, and 3), under two scenarios: 1) no inter-agent communication (predefined motion plan); and 2) local inter-agent communication. Additionally, homogenous transformations based on communication protocols will be used to deploy an arbitrary distribution of a MAS on to a desired curve. Homogenous transformation with no communication: A homogenous transformation of a MAS, evolving in an space, under zero inter agent communication is first considered. Here the homogenous mapping, is characterized by an n x n Jacobian matrix ( ) and an n x 1 rigid body displacement vector ( ), that are based on positions of n+1 agents of the MAS, called leader agents. The designed Jacobian ( ) and rigid body displacement vector ( ) are passed onto rest of the agents of the MAS, called followers, who will then use that information to update their positions under a pre- iv defined motion plan. Consequently, the motion of MAS will evolve as a homogenous transformation of the initial configuration without explicit communication among agents. Homogenous Transformation under Local Communication: We develop a framework for homogenous transformation of MAS, evolving in , under a local inter agent communication topology. Here we assume that some agents are the leaders, that are transformed homogenously in an n-D space. In addition, every follower agent of the MAS communicates with some local agents to update its position, in order to grasp the homogenous mapping that is prescribed by the leader agents. We show that some distance ratios that are assigned based on initial formation, if preserved, lead to asymptotic convergence of the initial formation to a final formation under a homogenous mapping. Deployment of a Random Distribution on a Desired Manifold: Deployment of agents of a MAS, moving in a plane, on to a desired curve, is a task that is considered as an application of the proposed approach. In particular, a 2-D MAS evolution problem is considered as two 1-D MAS evolution problems, where x or y coordinates of the position of all agents are modeled as points confined to move on a straight line. Then, for every coordinate of MAS evolution, bulk motion is controlled by two agents considered leaders that move independently, with rest of the follower agents motions evolving through each follower agent communicating with two adjacent agents.

"A Single Function Agent (SiFA) is a software agent, with only one function, one point of view, and one target object on which to act. For example, an agent might be a critic (function) of material (target) from the point of view of cost. This research investigates the possibilities and implications of the SiFA concept, and analyzes the definition language, negotiation language and negotiation strategies of the agents. After defining a domain-independent set of agent types we investigated negotiation, analyzing which pairs/groups of agents have reason to communicate, and what the information passed between them should be, as well as what knowledge was needed to support the negotiation. A library for the CLIPS expert system shell was built, which allows development of SiFA based expert systems from domain independent templates. We will present two such systems, one as implemented for the domain of ceramic component material selection and the other (in development) for simple sailboat design. The effect of negotiation on the design process and the results are discussed, as well as directions for future research into SiFAs."

The availability of numerous mobile agent systems with its own strengths and weaknesses poses a problem when deciding on a particular mobile agent system. In this dissertation, factors based on mobility, communication and security of the mobile agent systems are presented and used as a means to address this problem. To facilitate in the process of selection, a grouping scheme of the agent system was proposed. Based on this grouping scheme, mobile agent systems with common properties are grouped together and analyzed against the above-mentioned factors. In addition, an application was developed using the Aglet Software Development Toolkit to demonstrate certain features of agent mobility, communication and security. / Theoretical Computing / M. Sc. (Computer Science)

The availability of numerous mobile agent systems with its own strengths and weaknesses poses a problem when deciding on a particular mobile agent system. In this dissertation, factors based on mobility, communication and security of the mobile agent systems are presented and used as a means to address this problem. To facilitate in the process of selection, a grouping scheme of the agent system was proposed. Based on this grouping scheme, mobile agent systems with common properties are grouped together and analyzed against the above-mentioned factors. In addition, an application was developed using the Aglet Software Development Toolkit to demonstrate certain features of agent mobility, communication and security. / Theoretical Computing / M. Sc. (Computer Science)