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Multi Agent System

This document provides an introduction to multi-agent systems. It discusses how agents are autonomous software components that can perceive their environment and take actions. Multi-agent systems involve multiple interacting agents that may cooperate or compete. The document outlines the key properties of agents, including autonomy, reactivity, proactivity, and mobility. It also discusses the abstract architecture of an agent and its interaction with the environment through a perception-decision-action loop. Finally, some applications of multi-agent systems are mentioned like distributed systems, networks, and e-commerce.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
216 views20 pages

Multi Agent System

This document provides an introduction to multi-agent systems. It discusses how agents are autonomous software components that can perceive their environment and take actions. Multi-agent systems involve multiple interacting agents that may cooperate or compete. The document outlines the key properties of agents, including autonomy, reactivity, proactivity, and mobility. It also discusses the abstract architecture of an agent and its interaction with the environment through a perception-decision-action loop. Finally, some applications of multi-agent systems are mentioned like distributed systems, networks, and e-commerce.

Uploaded by

anujdandona
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Multi-Agent Systems Introduction

Ankit Bhardwaj
Dept. of Information Technology

NIT Durgapur, WB

About Agent
Agents are considered one of the most important and latest paradigms that on the one hand may improve on current methods for conceptualizing, designing and implementing software systems, and on the other hand may be the solution to the legacy software integration problem.

Programming Progression
Programming has progressed through: machine code; assembly language; machine-independent programming languages; sub-routines; procedures & functions; abstract data types; objects; to agents.

History of Computing
Five ongoing trends have marked the history of computing: ubiquity interconnection intelligence delegation human-orientation

Ubiquity
The continual reduction in cost of computing capability has made it possible to introduce processing power into places and devices that would have once been uneconomic. As processing capability spreads, sophistication (and intelligence of a sort) becomes ubiquitous.

Interconnection
Computer systems today no longer stand alone, but are networked into large distributed systems The internet is an obvious example

Intelligence
The complexity of tasks that we are capable of automating and delegating to computers has grown steadily. If you dont feel comfortable with this definition of intelligence, its probably because you are a human.

Delegation
Computers are doing more for us without our intervention. We are giving control to computers, even in safety critical tasks. One example: fly-by-wire aircraft, where the machines judgment may be trusted more than an experienced pilot.

Human Orientation
The movement away from machine-oriented views of programming toward concepts and metaphors that more closely reflect the way we ourselves understand the world Programmers (and users!) relate to the machine differently Programmers conceptualize and implement software in terms of higher-level more human-oriented abstractions

What is an Agent ?
Although there is no single denition of an agent but all denitions agree that an Agent is essentially a special software component that has autonomy that provides an interoperable interface to an arbitrary system and/or behaves like a human agent, working for some clients in pursuit of its own agenda. In other words An agent is a computer system that is capable of independent action on behalf of its user or owner.
SYSTEM input ENVIRONMENT output

What are Multi-Agent Systems ?


A multiagent system is one that consists of a number of agents, which interact with one-another. In the most general case, agents will be acting on behalf of users with different goals and motivations Agents may interact with each other both indirectly (by acting on the environment) or directly (via communication and negotiation). Agents may decide to cooperate for mutual benet or may compete to serve their own interests.

To successfully interact, they will require following abilities Cooperate Coordinate Negotiate

Agent and Environment


An agent as being in a close-coupled, continual interaction with its environment and works in following loop : sense decide act sense decide

Properties of Agents
Autonomous : It operates without the direct intervention of humans or others and has control over its actions and internal state. Social : It cooperates with humans or other agents in order to achieve its tasks. Reactive : It perceives its environment and responds in a timely fashion to changes that occur in the environment. Proactive : It does not simply act in response to its environment but is able to exhibit goal-directed behavior by taking initiative. Mobile : It has ability to travel between different nodes in a computer network.

Properties of Environment
Accessible vs Inaccessible: Can the agent see everything ? Deterministic vs Non-deterministic: Do actions have guaranteed eect ? Static vs Dynamic: Does the environment change on its own? Discrete vs Continuous: Is the number of actions and percepts nite?

Abstract Architecture of Agent


Assume the environment may be in any of a nite set E of discrete, instantaneous states: E = { e, e1, e2, .. } Agents are assumed to have a repertoire of possible actions available to them, which transform the state of the environment. Ac = { a, a1, a2, ..} A run, r, of an agent in an environment is a sequence of interleaved environment states and actions: r:e
a

e1

a1

e2

a2

..

an

en

Agent and States


Consider An Agent that maintain States

State Functions
Perception Function
See : E Per

Action Function
Action : I
Next : Per * I

Ac
I

Next State Function

Applications
Agents are usefully applied in domains where autonomous action is required. Intelligent agents are usefully applied in domains where flexible autonomous action is required. Main application areas: distributed/concurrent systems networks human-computer interfaces E-Commerce

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