skip to main content
10.5555/2936924.2937041acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesaamasConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Multi-Agent System in Practice: When Research Meets Reality

Published: 09 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The applicability and usefulness of agent technology for real world problems is still a matter of discussion - even within the AAMAS community. While theoretical models have significantly matured and led to an exciting variety of results, there were only few attempts to validate these models in reality. In this paper we aim to report on challenges that occurred when agent theory was used to approach real world problems. In doing so, we focus on the concept of planning, since planning currently appears to be one of the most relevant concepts for distributed real world applications. We examine four agent-based applications and emphasise problems that occurred when agent theory was practically applied. We also show how these problems were countered and propose more general solutions based on these tailored and context-specific approaches. The aim of this paper is to bring the two diverging branches of agent theory and practice back together in order to better adapt agent technology to the requirements of professional software.

References

[1]
R. Akkiraju, B. Srivastava, A.-A. Ivan, R. Goodwin, and T. Syeda-Mahmood. SEMAPLAN: Combining planning with semantic matching to achieve web service composition. In Proceedings of the 21st National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'06), 2006.
[2]
T. Aubonnet, L. Henrio, S. Kessal, O. Kulankhina, F. Lemoine, E. Madelaine, C. Ruz, and N. Simoni. Management of service composition based on self-controlled components. Journal of Internet Services and Applications, 6(1):1--15, 2015.
[3]
P. Bercher, T. Geier, and S. Biundo. Using state-based planning heuristics for partial-order causal-link planning. In I. J. Timm and M. Thimm, editors, KI 2013: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, volume 8077 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pages 1--12. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2013.
[4]
D. Bianchini, V. D. Antonellis, M. Melchiori, and D. Salvi. Semantic-enriched service discovery. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference on Data Engineering Workshops, pages 38--38, 2006.
[5]
B. Burmeister. Industrial application of agent systems: Lessons learned and future challenges. In L. Braubach, W. van der Hoek, P. Petta, and A. Pokahr, editors, Multiagent System Technologies, 7th German Conference, MATES 2009, Hamburg, Germany, September 2009, Proceedings, volume 5774 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pages 1--3. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009.
[6]
A. Carenini, D. Cerizza, M. Comerio, E. D. Valle, F. D. Paoli, A. Maurino, M. Palmonari, and A. Turati. GLUE2: A web service discovery engine with non-functional properties. In Proceedings of the IEEE 6th European Conference on Web Services (ECOW'08), pages 21--30, 2008.
[7]
S. A. B. Cruz, A. M. V. Monteiro, and R. Santos. Automated geospatial web services composition based on geodata quality requirements. Computers & Geosciences, 47(0):60--74, 2012.
[8]
J. de Bruijn, H. Lausen, R. Krummenacher, A. Polleres, L. Predoiu, M. Kifer, and D. Fensel. The web service modeling language (WSML). Technical report, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), 2005. http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d16/d16.1/v0.21/.
[9]
P. Doherty, W. Lukaszewicz, and A. Szalas. Efficient reasoning using the local closed-world assumption. In S. A. Cerri and D. Dochev, editors, Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications, volume 1904 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 49--58. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2003.
[10]
A. E. Eiben and J. E. Smith. Introduction to Evolutionary Computing. Natural Computing. Springer, 2003.
[11]
T. Erl. SOA Principles of Service Design. Prentice Hall, 2007.
[12]
J. Euzenat and P. Shvaiko. Ontology Matching. Springer, 2007.
[13]
J. Fähndrich, N. Masuch, H. Yildirim, and S. Albayrak. Towards automated service matchmaking and planning for multi-agent systems with OWL-S -- approach and challenges. In Service-Oriented Computing -- ICSOC 2013 Workshops, volume 8377 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 240--247. Springer International Publishing, 2014.
[14]
D. Fensel, F. M. Facca, E. Simperl, and I. Toma. Semantic Web Services. Springer Science & Business Media, 2011.
[15]
M. Genesereth. Knowledge interchange format. Proposed Draft NCITS.T2/98-004, American National Standard, 1998.
[16]
A. Gerevini, A. Saetti, and I. Serina. Case-based planning for problems with real-valued fluents: Kernel functions for effective plan retrieval. In Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2012), pages 348--353, 2012.
[17]
M. Ghallab, A. Howe, C. Knoblock, D. Mcdermott, A. Ram, M. Veloso, D. Weld, and D. Wilkins. PDDL -- the planning domain definition language, 1998.
[18]
M. Ghallab, D. Nau, and P. Traverso. The actor's view of automated planning and acting: A position paper. Artificial Intelligence, 208:1--17, 2014.
[19]
L. Guzmán, A. Jaime, C. Ovalle, and A. Demetrio. Web service composition: a semantic web and automated planning technique application. Ingenierıa e Investigación, 28(3):145--149, 2008.
[20]
O. Hatzi, D. Vrakas, M. Nikolaidou, N. Bassiliades, D. Anagnostopoulos, and I. Vlahavas. An integrated approach to automated semantic web service composition through planning. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 5(3):319--332, 2012.
[21]
C.-E. Hrabia, T. Küster, M. Voß, F. D. P. Pardo, and S. Albayrak. Adaptive multi-stage optimisation for EV charging integration into smart grid control. In Q. Chen, P. Torroni, S. Villata, J. Hsu, and A. Omicini, editors, PRIMA 2015: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, volume 9387 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pages 622--630. Springer International Publishing, 2015.
[22]
C.-E. Hrabia, F. D. P. Pardo, T. Küster, and S. Albayrak. Multi-stage smart grid optimisation with a multiagent system (demonstration). In Proceedings of 14th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2015), pages 1937--1938, 2015.
[23]
International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. AAMAS 2015 Conference Program. IFAAMAS, 2015.
[24]
P. Kapahnke and M. Klusch. Adaptive hybrid selection of semantic services: The iSeM matchmaker. In Semantic Web Services: Advancement through Evaluation. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2012.
[25]
M. Klusch, A. Gerber, and M. Schmidt. Semantic web service composition planning with OWLS-Xplan. In Agents and the Semantic Web: Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium. AAAI Fall Symposium, November 4-6, Arlington, VA, USA, pages 55--62, 2005.
[26]
J. Kopecký, T. Vitvar, C. Bournez, and J. Farrell. SAWSDL: Semantic annotations for WSDL and XML schema. IEEE Internet Computing, 11(6):60--67, 2007.
[27]
T. Küster, M. Lützenberger, and S. Albayrak. A formal description of a mapping from business processes to agents. In M. Baldoni, L. Baresi, and M. Dastani, editors, Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, volume 9318 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pages 153--170. Springer International Publishing, 2015.
[28]
U. Küster, B. König-Ries, M. Klein, and M. Stern. DIANE: A matchmaking-centered framework for automated service discovery, composition, binding, and invocation on the web. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 12(2):41--68, 2007.
[29]
J. Li. A fast semantic web services matchmaker for OWL-S services. Journal of Networks, 8(5):1104--1111, 2013.
[30]
M. Lützenberger, N. Masuch, T. Küster, D. Freund, M. Voß, C.-E. Hrabia, D. Pozo, J. Fähndrich, F. Trollmann, J. Keiser, and S. Albayrak. A common approach to intelligent energy and mobility services in a smart city environment. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 6(3):337--350, 2015.
[31]
D. Martin, M. Paolucci, S. McIlraith, M. Burstein, D. McDermott, D. McGuinness, B. Parsia, T. Payne, M. Sabou, M. Solanki, N. Srinivasan, and K. Sycara. Bringing semantics to web services: The OWL-S approach. In Semantic Web Services and Web Process Composition, pages 26--42. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2004.
[32]
N. Masuch, B. Hirsch, M. Burkhardt, A. Heßler, and S. Albayrak. SeMa 2 -- a hybrid semantic service matching approach. In Semantic Services: Advancement through Evaluation, pages 35--48. Springer-Verlag, 2012.
[33]
V. Mařík and D. McFarlane. Industrial adoption of agent-based technologies. Intelligent Systems, IEEE, 20(1):27--35, 2005.
[34]
D. McGuinness and F. van Harmelen. OWL web ontology language overview. Technical report, W3C, 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/.
[35]
J. McKean, H. Shorter, M. Luck, P. McBurney, and S. Willmott. Technology diffusion: analysing the diffusion of agent technologies. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 17:372--396, 2008.
[36]
D. S. Nau, M. Ghallab, and P. Traverso. Blended planning and acting: Preliminary approach, research challenges. AAAI, pages 4047--4051, 2015.
[37]
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) Version 2.0, Apr. 2007.
[38]
M. P. Papazoglou, P. Traverso, S. Dustdar, and F. Leymann. Service-oriented computing: a research roadmap. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 17(2):223--255, 2008.
[39]
J. Peer. A PDDL based tool for automatic web service composition. In H. J. Ohlbach and S. Schaffert, editors, Principles and Practice of Semantic Web Reasoning, volume 3208 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 149--163. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004.
[40]
M. Pěchoučyek and V. Mařrík. Industrial deployment of multi-agent technologies: review and selected case studies. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 17(3):397--431, 2008.
[41]
D. Redavid, L. Iannone, T. Payne, and G. Semeraro. OWL-S atomic services composition with SWRL rules. In A. An, S. Matwin, Z. W. Ra's, and D. Ślȩzak, editors, Foundations of Intelligent Systems, volume 4994 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 605--611. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2008.
[42]
L. Sabatucci and M. Cossentino. From means-end analysis to proactive means-end reasoning. In Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (SEAMS 2015), pages 2--12, 2015.
[43]
C. Sathya and T. Hemalatha. An adaptive architecture for autonomic orchestration of web services. International Journal Of Engineering and Computer Science, 2(4):972--975, 2013.
[44]
P. Shvaiko and J. Euzenat. Ontology matching: State of the art and future challenges. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 25(1):158--176, 2013.
[45]
E. Sirin, B. Parsia, D. Wu, J. Hendler, and D. Nau. HTN planning for web service composition using SHOP2. Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, 1(4):377--396, 2004.
[46]
H. Tong, J. Cao, S. Zhang, and M. Li. A distributed algorithm for web service composition based on service agent model. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 22(12):2008--2021, 2011.
[47]
D. Weyns, A. Helleboogh, and T. Holvoet. How to get multi-agent systems accepted in industry? International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (IJAOSE), 3(4):383--390, May 2009.
[48]
F. Zambonelli, N. Bicocchi, G. Cabri, L. Leonardi, and M. Puviani. On self-adaptation, self-expression, and self-awareness in autonomic service component ensembles. In Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems Workshops (SASOW 2011), pages 108--113, 2011.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
AAMAS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems
May 2016
1580 pages
ISBN:9781450342391

Sponsors

  • IFAAMAS

In-Cooperation

Publisher

International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

Richland, SC

Publication History

Published: 09 May 2016

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. agent theory and practice
  2. automated planning
  3. challenges
  4. industrial adoption
  5. service oriented architecture

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

AAMAS '16
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

AAMAS '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 137 of 550 submissions, 25%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)10
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 14 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

Get Access

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media