D.2.3 NIAD&R: Ongoing projects

D.2.3 NIAD&R: Ongoing projects

1. AgentLink II

Project title: AgentLink II
Effort at LIACC: 1 man year
Funding entity: EU (IST)
Total award period covered: from August/2001 to August/2003
Coordinator at LIACC: Eugénio Oliveira
Prime contractor: University of Southampton

Other partners include, Queen Mary Westfield College/University of London, Technical University of Munich, University of York, OFAI (Vienna), University of Paris VI, University of Neuchatel, IIIA/Barcelona, Imag/Grenoble and many others.

Partners are grouped in different Special Interest Groups and NIAD&R - LIACC belongs to two different SIGs: Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC) and Adaptive and Learning Agents (ALAD). Our activity in AgentLink II is directly related with our research on: Agents Negotiation protocol models

• We have recently developed, presented and discussed, an agent-mediated platform for Virtual Enterprise formation. One of our main contributions and achievements, during 2002, was the demonstration of ForEV, an agent-based platform encompassing several different tools providing needed services for the Virtual Enterprise Life Cycle, starting with the Formation phase (resulting from A.Rocha PhD thesis).
• We are also contributing to designing specific policies for representing enterprise/products knowledge, through appropriate ontologies useful for both the VE formation and the monitoring process.This work is the subject of a PhD thesis (A.Malucelli).
• As a result of the challenge presented by an industrial representative at one of the AMEC SIG's sessions, we have developed, and already presented for discussion (both through papers (see references on Nogueira) and through oral presentation during SIG meetings) our approach to the E-brokering services for the Insurance domain.

• To formalize the concept of Electronic Institutions, including several different kinds of services and incorporating laws and rules to be enforced on any agent-mediated electronic market. We are also starting to define the "phased contract" concept.
• To generalize the concept of Electronic Institution for controlling and monitoring Distributed workflows,through all the available secure, robust and transparent procedures for interaction.
• A new research topic concerns marketing strategies to be used by the seller-side of the e-commerce activity.
• One Master thesis on the E-Brokering for the Insurance Domain subject has been submitted.
• We have also started to contribute to another SIG (ALAD) by means of presenting our research results on Multi-Agent learning. A new Project proposal including LIACC and other AgentLink partners, and incorporating these ideas, is now being submitted to the EU.

2. PORTUS - A Common Framework for Cooperation in Mobile Robotics

Motivation: This project aims at developing a new approach to cooperative robotics in general and to building RoboSoccer teams in particular. The project main goal is to design a software common framework suitable for the implementation of a agent-based software that may control robots to be used for several cooperative robotic tasks and in particular, may control robots that are able to play in any Robotic Soccer leagues (simulation, small-size, middle-size and legged). The same agent-based software will control each one of the robots of Portus team, regarding its action and perception capabilities and the cooperative task to perform. The common framework will include a knowledge representation structure capable of representing structured knowledge supplied by a domain expert to a team of cooperative robots. This structure is instantiated by special supervisor agents developed for each RoboCup league or cooperative task to perform.

Each agent in Portus includes a dynamic world state model that will be updated though visual perception, robot communication and action prediction. In Portus project, both inter-agent cooperation and team coordination policies have to be investigated. This will include cooperation methods like dynamic positioning and role exchange, strategic positioning and intelligent communication.

In order to control different robots, the common framework software agent need specific parts that must also be built to deal with special constraints related with the agent's perception and action capabilities.

The very idea of Portus project is then to design an agent-based common framework applicable in partially cooperative, partially adversarial domains, to different cooperative robotic tasks, including all major RoboCup soccer leagues.

Main objectives of the project:

The main objective of Portus is to develop a common agent-based framework for controlling cooperative teams of mobile robots. According to the general architecture we are envisaging for the proposed framework, this objective may be subdivided into the following sub-objectives:

• To develop a general knowledge representation structures for representing adequate knowledge for cooperative robotics tasks in adversarial environments;
• To develop languages suitable for the communication between the common framework and specific modules that deal with action, perception, communication and domain knowledge;
• To formalize and implement cooperative decision-making both at individual and team level;
• To improve and refine methods for sensing and communication in the referred environments;
• To develop agents capable of supervising different teams able to fulfill different cooperative tasks.

 

 

Portus main contribution will be a configurable common framework flexible enough to deal with perception, decision-making and action for different (both real and virtual) cooperative teams of robots.

3. SAM-AC - Distributed Cooperative Learning in Multi-Agent Systems

4. FC Portugal - New Coordination Methodologies Applied to the Simulation League

5. LEMAS - Learning in Multi-Agent Systems in the RoboCup Sony Legged League

Project Coordinator: Eugénio Oliveira Prime Contractor: Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. 

D.2.3 NIAD&R: Ongoing projects