Towards a Multi-Agent System Application to Support Communities of Practice

홈 서버와 가정용서비스 로봇, 다양한 Device를 포함하는 홈 네트워크 시스템을 이용하여 가정환경 내에서 발생 가능한 다양하게 분산된 임무들을 수행하는데 있어서 Multi-Agent 시스템을 응용하는 것은 효율적이라고 알려져 있다. 이러한 시스템에서 휴먼 인터페이스와 물리적 서비스 제공의 중추 역할을 하는 것은 바로 지능형 서비스 로봇이다. 따라서, 기존의 Multi Agent System을 응용하여 Multi Agent Robot System을 정의할 수 있다. 가정이라는 'open'된 특성의 환경에서 Multi Agent Robot System이 사용자에게 좀 더 효율적인 서비스를 제공하기 위해서는 존재하는 모든 Agent 간의 유기적인 정보교환과 협력이 필요하다. 이것을 위하여 자율구동하며 사용자에게 물리적 서비스를 제공할 수 있는 다수의 로봇들을 Agent로 정의하고, 로봇 Agent간의 통신과, 로봇 이외의 Agent로써의 역할을 감당할 수 있는 홈 서버 등의 Agent와 로봇 Agent들의 통신을 사용자 interface에 직접 표현할 수 있는 시뮬레이터를 설계, 제시한다. Using home network system including home server, home service robot, a variety of device, it is generally known that application of Multi Agent System for performing variously distributed process that can be occur in home environment, is efficient method. In this system, it is intelligent service robot that a key of human interface and physical service offer Therefore, using application of established multi agent system, we can defined Multi Agent Robot System. In 'open' home environment, between all agent data interaction and cooperation are needed for Multi Agent System offer to user that more efficient service. For this, we focus our attention on define as agent that can autonomic drive and offer to user that physical service robots and, design, suggest the simulator can display that between robot agents communication or between other agents, like home server, and robot agents communication information to user interface.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is one of the principal indicators for human health evaluation as well as for further issues in occupational medicine, public health and planning. Certain difficulties to evaluate EIA appear due to, on the one hand, the nature of contaminants and health characteristics, and, on the other, the difficulties found in data processing, such as heterogeneity of the information sources, lack of data quality and need to use numerous data mining methods. The application of multi-agent systems (MAS) to EIA helps operating with distributed decentralized information and generating general decisions and solutions. In order to facilitate the workflow of MAS planning and implementation in decision support systems (DSS) applied to EIA, a generalized multi-agent system technology (MAST) is proposed. This workflow is general enough to enable the related MAS to be used in any application area requiring decision making. We demonstrate that by only changing the domain ontology the MAS is easily oriented towards another problem area. The functional organization and the roles executed in the MAS conform to the logical sequence of the data transformation flow, which include information retrieval and fusion, data pre-processing, data mining and modeling, and simulation and decision making.

A multi-agent system consists of several computational entities capable of autonomous actions, called agents, which communicate with each other, and have the ability to coordinate their actions and to cooperate. Multi-agent systems received a great interest and attention over time, as they can be seen as a key enabling technology for complex applications, where distributed and processing of data, autonomy, and high degree of interactions in dynamic environments are required at the same time. Therefore, in view of current and future developments of the digitalization of industrial production cycles promoted by Industry 4.0, multi-agent systems are foreseen to play an increasing role for industrial production management and optimization. Because of barriers represented by large presence of legacy systems, in the steel sector agent-based technology is not widely applied yet, and multi-agent systems applications are very few. On the other hand, steel manufacturing industries are complex and dynamic systems whose production processes held a strategic role in the global economy. During last decades, the steel sector has undergone relevant transformations, especially through the massive digitalization and the innovation introduced by Industry 4.0. A further evolution is foreseen in the incoming years to improve the sustainability of the production cycle by improving energy and resource efficiency. Therefore, steel industries must face several challenges on the path toward the factory of the future. In such context multi-agent systems, through their intrinsic properties, such as autonomy, social abilities, reactivity, proactivity, and mobility, can overcome existing drawbacks and barriers, by increasing flexibility, improving resources efficiency, handling production operations, reacting to unpredicted events, optimizing production processes, and supporting legacy systems. In this paper, some applications of multi-agent systems in steel sector are presented to show the advantages and opportunities of agent-based technology.

When it comes to modeling social life, few paradigms are more suitable than multi-agent systems (MASs). MASs have helped gain a deeper understanding of countless social phenomena (through agent-based social simulation) that were hard to study using analytical approaches. More recently, MASs have evolved into handy assistants to the human users they can act on behalf of. One example of such use of MASs is in implementing virtual enterprises (VEs), i.e. temporary alliances of geographically distributed organizations created in order to exploit a specific business opportunity. Competition, negociation and cooperation mechanisms are usually copresent in the creation and operation of VEs, with individual members being simultaneously autonomous self-interested entities and parts of a larger whole, the benefits of which they are also trying to maximize. In turn, VEs have application areas such as commerce, manufacturing, and tourism, offering important contributions to the universal contemporary strife to obtain customer-driven products while optimizing time, costs, and quality. In this chapter, we aim to review the most important applications of MASs in social sciences, with a focus on VEs as a special case.

Nowadays, the efficiency of multiagent systems in wireless sensor networks prompts the researchers to use these emerging mobile software packets in different simulated approaches or real-world applications. Heterogeneous and distributed wireless sensor networks could be integrated with the multiagent systems to map the real-world challenges into the artificial intelligence world. The multiagent systems have been applied from simulated approaches like object detection/tracking, healthcare, control/assistant, and security systems to real-world applications, including medical/human-care systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. Furthermore, the integration of wireless sensor networks with multiagent systems have emerged novel application, which is known as mobile robots. However, the extensive use of mobile agents in wireless sensor networks has posed different challenges for researchers, including security, resource, and timing limitation. In this work, we review recent simulated approaches and real-world applications of multiagent systems in wireless sensor networks, in which a set of common factors about the things that have been studied are extracted and compared to analyze the performance of mobile agent–based systems in the wireless sensor networks, as well. This analysis provides new research directions about multiagent systems in wireless sensor networks for interested researchers. Finally, a novel framework for dealing with the challenges of multiagent-based applications in the wireless sensor networks which have been mentioned is suggested.

A microgrid can be defined as a grid of interconnected distributed energy resources, loads and energy storage systems. In microgrid systems containing renewable energy resources, the coordinated operation of distributed generation units is important to ensure the stability of the microgrid. A microgrid needs a successful control scheme to achieve its design goals. Undesirable situations such as distorted voltage profile and frequency fluctuations are significantly reduced by installing the appropriate hardware such as energy storage systems, and control strategies. The multi-agent system is one of the approaches used to control microgrids. The application of multi-agent systems in electric power systems is becoming popular because of their inherent benefits such as autonomy, responsiveness, and social ability. This study provides an overview of the agent concept and multi-agent systems, as well as reviews of recent research studies on multi-agent systems’ application in microgrid control systems. In addition, a multi-agent-based controller and energy management system design is proposed for the DC microgrid in the study. The designed microgrid is composed of a photovoltaic system consisting of 30 series-connected PV modules, a wind turbine, a synchronous generator, a battery-based energy storage system, critical and non-critical DC loads, the grid and the control system. The microgrid is controlled by the designed multi-agent-based controller. The proposed multi-agent-based controller has a distributed generation agent, battery agent, load agent and grid agent. The roles of each agent and communication among the agents are designed properly and coordinated to achieve control goals, which basically are the DC bus voltage quality and system stability. The designed microgrid and proposed multi-agent-based controller are tested for two different scenarios, and the performance of the controller has been verified with MATLAB/Simulink simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed controller provides constant DC voltage for any operation condition. Additionally, the system stability is ensured with the proposed controller for variable renewable generation and variable load conditions.

Information security is vital to many multiagent system applications. In this paper we formalise the notion of detectability of attacks in a MAS setting and analyse its applicability. We introduce a taxonomy of detectability specifications expressed in temporal-epistemic logic. We illustrate the practical relevance of attack detectability in a case study applied to a variant of Kerberos protocol. We model-check attack detectability in automatically generated MAS models for security protocols.

Process high complexity of modern manufacturing is posing great challenges to production scheduling. It becomes more difficult to build scheduling model based on conventional methods. Meanwhile, many of the scheduling approaches are limited in the scope of application. Therefore, following the development of distributed artificial intelligence, the multi-agent system (MAS) has been considered as an efficient method for scheduling and modeling in complex manufacturing processes and the application of MAS also has been an essential research trend. In recent years, many research achievements have been obtained in the areas. This paper provides a review on the recent achievement and discussed the agent internal structure, multi-agent scheduling model and agent negotiation mechanism which are key issues in implementing manufacturing processes based on MAS. Besides, the methods and strategies of rescheduling with multi-agent technique in manufacturing process are also analyzed and described. The problems worthy of further study, probably developing trend and challenges are presented.

Multi-agent systems (MAS) represent a distributed computing paradigm well suited to tackle today’s challenges in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). Both share many similarities such as the interconnection of distributed devices and their cooperation. The combination of MAS and IoT would allow the transfer of the experience gained in MAS research to the broader range of IoT applications. The key enabler for utilizing MAS in the IoT is the ability to build large-scale and fault-tolerant MASs since IoT concepts comprise possibly thousands or even millions of devices. However, well known multi-agent platforms (MAP), e. g., Java Agent DE-velopment Framework (JADE), are not able to deal with these challenges. To this aim, we present a cloud-native Multi-Agent Platform (cloneMAP) as a modern MAP based on cloud-computing techniques to enable scalability and fault-tolerance. A microservice architecture is used to implement it in a distributed way utilizing the open-source container orchestration system Kubernetes. Thereby, bottlenecks and single-points of failure are conceptually avoided. A comparison with JADE via relevant performance metrics indicates the massively improved scalability. Furthermore, the implementation of a large-scale use case verifies cloneMAP’s suitability for IoT applications. This leads to the conclusion that cloneMAP extends the range of possible MAS applications and enables the integration with IoT concepts.

The comprehensive and safe application of unmanned surface vessels is certainly one of the biggest challenges currently facing maritime science. Such vessels can be implemented within a wide range of autonomy levels that goes from remote-controlled vessels to fully autonomous vessels in which intelligent vessel systems completely perform all necessary operations. One of the ways to achieve autonomous vessel systems is to implement multi-agent systems that take over all functions performed by the crew in classical manned crew vessels. A vessel is a complex system that conceptually can be considered as a set of interconnected subsystems. Theoretically, the functions of these subsystems could be performed using appropriate multi-agent systems. In this paper we analyzed 24 relevant papers. A review of the current state of implementation of multi-agent systems for performing the functions of unmanned surface vessels is presented.

PurposeThe applications of multi-agent systems (MASs) are considered to be among the most promising paradigms for detailed investigations and reliable problem-solving methods, and MAS applications make it possible for researchers and practitioners to better understand complex systems. Although a number of prior studies have been conducted to address complex issues that arise from construction projects, few studies have summarised the applications and discussed the capacity of MASs from the perspective of construction management. To fill the gap, this paper provides a comprehensive literature review of MAS applications from the perspective of construction management.Design/methodology/approachWeb of Science and Scopus are the most commonly used international databases in conducting the literature reviews. A total of 86 relevant papers published in SCI-Expanded, SSCI and Ei Compendex journals related to the application of MASs from the perspective of construction management are selected to be analysed and discussed in this paper.FindingsBased on the 86 collected publications, the utilisations of MASs to support the management of the supply chain and the improvement of project performance are identified from the perspective of construction management, the characteristics and barriers of current MAS applications are analysed, a framework for developing agent-based models to address complex problems is proposed, and future research directions of MAS applications are discussed.Originality/valueThis review can serve as a useful reference for scholars to enhance their understanding of the current research and guide future research on MASs. The proposed framework can help build agent-based models to address complex problems in construction management.

Pricing and prioritizing the Internet access can be one of the potential measures to improve the efficiency of the Internet utilization and control the Internet congestion. In order to meet a diversity of user access requirements, the IP (Internet Protocol) routers can provide users with various priority service classes. This paper explores the application of multi-agent systems (MAS) in the implementation of rational IP routers on the priced Internet. The negotiation model for task decomposition and allocation, and the payment model are described. The strategies of achieving a more optimal global-level resource allocation and a rational and fair local-level resource allocation and scheduling for tasks with different priority are proposed. The strategies for price setting and adjustment are discussed. The consumer strategy is also addressed.

The modern organizations are facing problems which have caused them to lose personnel. Losing people, the organizations lose knowledge. One of the solutions is to collaborate and share knowledge across time and distance. Knowledge sharing in communities has attracted attention in fields like knowledge management or sociology, in both research and practice. Inter-organizational forms of network organizations are more and more accentuated. The paper focuses on the communities of practice within organizations and how through these communities collective intelligence is stimulated. First, we present the concept of communities of practice and show how multi-agent systems can simulate the behavior of complex systems composed of distinct components. Then we highlight the importance of collective intelligence in communities of practice and suggest a way to model communities of practice's dynamics. The main objective of the paper is to simulate collective intelligence capacity using agent-based models, and more specifically, the team of knowledge workers formation.

The research focuses on methods and software tools for decision support for the organization of distributed production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on digital twin and multi-agent systems technologies. The purpose of the work is to provide a critical review of existing approaches to the organization of distributed production of UAVs, as complex technical objects, and to substantiate an approach to building a multi-agent decision support system for the synthesis of a rational production structure based on digital twins of participants in production cooperation. The tasks include: classifying unmanned aerial vehicles according to the main features that determine their production specifics; analysing modern scientific publications in the field of distributed production informatization, multi-agent systems, digital twins and intelligent decision support; identifying the limitations of existing solutions; and proposing an approach to the organization of distributed production of UAVs using digital twins in the form of intelligent agents. The applied methods are based on system and classification analysis, generalization of modern scientific approaches to the organization of production, decision-making theory, the concept of multi-agent systems, digital twin technologies, production logistics and artificial intelligence. The following results were obtained: UAVs were classified by mass, purpose and level of autonomy, which made it possible to determine the specifics of their production and life cycle management. An analysis of scientific publications was performed, which showed the active development of areas related to the use of multi-agent systems, digital twins and artificial intelligence to address complex tasks in UAV life cycle management. It was established, in particular, that the works of recent years consider the issues of cooperative UAV production, the use of deep learning algorithms for decision-making in dynamic environments and the integration of digital twins into relevant production systems. At the same time, a number of limitations on the implementation of existing solutions were identified: insufficient formalization of business processes between production participants, weak integration of digital twins into production logistics, and the lack of self-organization mechanisms. An approach to solving the problem of effective organization of distributed UAV production is proposed. The architecture of a multi-agent decision support system for distributed UAV production is developed, which includes modules for coordination, self-organization, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of production configuration options, considering the initial risk tolerance indicator. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is as follows: an approach to solving the problem of effective organization of distributed UAV production is proposed, which, unlike existing ones, is based on the representation of production participants as digital twins in the form of intelligent agents, this enables the generation of multiple options and the subsequent selection of the most rational configuration for organizing distributed UAV production in terms of business process efficiency and the reduction of production risks. The research results create a basis for further integration of multi-agent technologies into real-world manufacturing platforms and the expansion of their application to other types of complex machinery.

The common access to the broadband Internet allows small and medium enterprises (SME) simpler participation in various supply chains [3]. However the main problem still is lack of consistency between processes which are undertaken by various supply chain participants. The aim of this paper is to propose the concept of broader cooperation between manufacturing companies based on semantic web and multi-agent system. The background of this paper refers to previous experiences of the authors by implementation of the CORELOG project. It promotes cooperation in logistics services among manufacturing companies located in the Bologna metropolitan area in order to increase companies’ competitiveness as well as environmental sustainability through the rationalization of the logistics processes. The application of semantic web and multi-agent system in the above mentioned project allows the efficient automatic data collection about logistics services providers and their resources, as presented in the Internet.