An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems

An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems
Author: Michael Wooldridge
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2009-06-22
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0470519460

The study of multi-agent systems (MAS) focuses on systems in which many intelligent agents interact with each other. These agents are considered to be autonomous entities such as software programs or robots. Their interactions can either be cooperative (for example as in an ant colony) or selfish (as in a free market economy). This book assumes only basic knowledge of algorithms and discrete maths, both of which are taught as standard in the first or second year of computer science degree programmes. A basic knowledge of artificial intelligence would useful to help understand some of the issues, but is not essential. The book’s main aims are: To introduce the student to the concept of agents and multi-agent systems, and the main applications for which they are appropriate To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of intelligent agents To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of a multi-agent society To introduce a number of typical applications for agent technology After reading the book the student should understand: The notion of an agent, how agents are distinct from other software paradigms (e.g. objects) and the characteristics of applications that lend themselves to agent-oriented software The key issues associated with constructing agents capable of intelligent autonomous action and the main approaches taken to developing such agents The key issues in designing societies of agents that can effectively cooperate in order to solve problems, including an understanding of the key types of multi-agent interactions possible in such systems The main application areas of agent-based systems

Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems

Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems
Author: Jianan Wang
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-03-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0128204451

Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems: An Optimal and Robust Perspective reports and encourages technology transfer in the field of cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The book deals with UGVs, UAVs, UUVs and spacecraft, and more. It presents an extended exposition of the authors' recent work on all aspects of multi-agent technology. Modelling and cooperative control of multi-agent systems are topics of great interest, across both academia (research and education) and industry (for real applications and end-users). Graduate students and researchers from a wide spectrum of specialties in electrical, mechanical or aerospace engineering fields will use this book as a key resource. - Helps shape the reader's understanding of optimal and robust cooperative control design techniques for multi-agent systems - Presents new theoretical control challenges and investigates unresolved/open problems - Explores future research trends in multi-agent systems - Offers a certain amount of analytical mathematics, practical numerical procedures, and actual implementations of some proposed approaches

Multi-Agent Programming:

Multi-Agent Programming:
Author: Rafael H. Bordini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2009-06-13
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0387892990

Multi-Agent Systems are a promising technology to develop the next generation open distributed complex software systems. The main focus of the research community has been on the development of concepts (concerning both mental and social attitudes), architectures, techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. This contribution has been fragmented, without any clear way of “putting it all together”, rendering it inaccessible to students and young researchers, non-experts, and practitioners. Successful multi-agent systems development is guaranteed only if we can bridge the gap from analysis and design to effective implementation. Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications presents a number of mature and influential multi-agent programming languages, platforms, development tools and methodologies, and realistic applications, summarizing the state of the art in an accessible manner for professionals and computer science students at all levels.

Multi-Agent Systems. Theories, Languages and Applications

Multi-Agent Systems. Theories, Languages and Applications
Author: Chengqi Zhang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1998-12-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540654771

This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 4th Australian Workshop on distributed Artificial Intelligence held in Brisbane, QLD, Australia in July 1998. The 13 revised full selected and invited papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The book is devoted to theoretical aspects, languages, and applications of various types of multi-agent systems. Among the topics covered are self-interested mobile agents, formal specification of MAS, coordination, reinforcement learning, self organization, agent negotiation, agent-based intelligent systems, Internet-based DAI applications, agent-based scheduling, Internet agent trading.

Machine Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications

Machine Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications
Author: Management Association, Information Resources
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 2174
Release: 2011-07-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1609608194

"This reference offers a wide-ranging selection of key research in a complex field of study,discussing topics ranging from using machine learning to improve the effectiveness of agents and multi-agent systems to developing machine learning software for high frequency trading in financial markets"--Provided by publishe

Agent Technology

Agent Technology
Author: Nicholas R. Jennings
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3662036789

The first book to provide an integrative presentation of the issues, challenges and success of designing, building and using agent applications. The chapters presented are written by internationally leading authorities in the field, with a general audience in mind. The result is a unique overview of agent technology applications, ranging from an introduction to the technical foundations to reports on dealing with specific agent systems in practice.

Graph Theoretic Methods in Multiagent Networks

Graph Theoretic Methods in Multiagent Networks
Author: Mehran Mesbahi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1400835356

This accessible book provides an introduction to the analysis and design of dynamic multiagent networks. Such networks are of great interest in a wide range of areas in science and engineering, including: mobile sensor networks, distributed robotics such as formation flying and swarming, quantum networks, networked economics, biological synchronization, and social networks. Focusing on graph theoretic methods for the analysis and synthesis of dynamic multiagent networks, the book presents a powerful new formalism and set of tools for networked systems. The book's three sections look at foundations, multiagent networks, and networks as systems. The authors give an overview of important ideas from graph theory, followed by a detailed account of the agreement protocol and its various extensions, including the behavior of the protocol over undirected, directed, switching, and random networks. They cover topics such as formation control, coverage, distributed estimation, social networks, and games over networks. And they explore intriguing aspects of viewing networks as systems, by making these networks amenable to control-theoretic analysis and automatic synthesis, by monitoring their dynamic evolution, and by examining higher-order interaction models in terms of simplicial complexes and their applications. The book will interest graduate students working in systems and control, as well as in computer science and robotics. It will be a standard reference for researchers seeking a self-contained account of system-theoretic aspects of multiagent networks and their wide-ranging applications. This book has been adopted as a textbook at the following universities: ? University of Stuttgart, Germany Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Johannes Kepler University, Austria Georgia Tech, USA University of Washington, USA Ohio University, USA

Systems Approaches and Their Application

Systems Approaches and Their Application
Author: Mats-Olov Olsson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006-01-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1402023707

This book describes the application of systems thinking across a broad field of cases representing research, teaching, decision support and construction. All cases are presented by experts who have actually been involved in the activities they describe. The broad selection of cases captures the great variation of systems thinking, and how it is integrated into models and theories and solid knowledge pertaining to different substantive areas.

Rollout, Policy Iteration, and Distributed Reinforcement Learning

Rollout, Policy Iteration, and Distributed Reinforcement Learning
Author: Dimitri Bertsekas
Publisher: Athena Scientific
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2021-08-20
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1886529078

The purpose of this book is to develop in greater depth some of the methods from the author's Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control recently published textbook (Athena Scientific, 2019). In particular, we present new research, relating to systems involving multiple agents, partitioned architectures, and distributed asynchronous computation. We pay special attention to the contexts of dynamic programming/policy iteration and control theory/model predictive control. We also discuss in some detail the application of the methodology to challenging discrete/combinatorial optimization problems, such as routing, scheduling, assignment, and mixed integer programming, including the use of neural network approximations within these contexts. The book focuses on the fundamental idea of policy iteration, i.e., start from some policy, and successively generate one or more improved policies. If just one improved policy is generated, this is called rollout, which, based on broad and consistent computational experience, appears to be one of the most versatile and reliable of all reinforcement learning methods. In this book, rollout algorithms are developed for both discrete deterministic and stochastic DP problems, and the development of distributed implementations in both multiagent and multiprocessor settings, aiming to take advantage of parallelism. Approximate policy iteration is more ambitious than rollout, but it is a strictly off-line method, and it is generally far more computationally intensive. This motivates the use of parallel and distributed computation. One of the purposes of the monograph is to discuss distributed (possibly asynchronous) methods that relate to rollout and policy iteration, both in the context of an exact and an approximate implementation involving neural networks or other approximation architectures. Much of the new research is inspired by the remarkable AlphaZero chess program, where policy iteration, value and policy networks, approximate lookahead minimization, and parallel computation all play an important role.

Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems

Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems
Author: Federico Bergenti
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2006-04-28
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1402080581

As information technologies become increasingly distributed and accessible to larger number of people and as commercial and government organizations are challenged to scale their applications and services to larger market shares, while reducing costs, there is demand for software methodologies and appli- tions to provide the following features: Richer application end-to-end functionality; Reduction of human involvement in the design and deployment of the software; Flexibility of software behaviour; and Reuse and composition of existing software applications and systems in novel or adaptive ways. When designing new distributed software systems, the above broad requi- ments and their translation into implementations are typically addressed by partial complementarities and overlapping technologies and this situation gives rise to significant software engineering challenges. Some of the challenges that may arise are: determining the components that the distributed applications should contain, organizing the application components, and determining the assumptions that one needs to make in order to implement distributed scalable and flexible applications, etc.