14718930
Decision Processes in Agent-Based Automated Contracting
The Magnet system meets many of the challenges of modeling decision making for customer agents in automated contract negotiation. In order to model decision making in the uncertain environment of contract negotiation, we use the Expected Utility Theory. We describe that theory, followed by more detailed descriptions of the customer agents' key decision-making processes and our search algorithm. First, we offer an overview of the Magnet environment.
11333929
Mixed-initiative decision support in agent-based automated contracting
Using principles from Expected Utility Theory, we analyze the criteria that a customer agent in agent-based automated contracting would use in making decisions during the bidding cycle. We use the University of Minnesota's MAGNET automated-contracting environment as a framework for this analysis. Two decisions must be made by a customer agent during this process: deciding the composition of the Request for Quotes, and evaluating and awarding bids. We show how principles from Expected Utility Theory can be applied in a mixed-initiative environment, where user preferences control the decision-making process, and user decisions are nal. Finally, we show how the market infrastructure can support agent decision-making by gathering and analyzing statistical data on activities in the market.
2112426
Evaluating risk: flexibility and feasibility in multi-agent contracting
In an automated contracting environment, where a contractor agent must negotiate with other self-interested supplier agents in order to execute its plans, there is a tradeoff between giving the suppliers sufficient flexibility to incorporate the requirements of the contractor’s call-for-bids into their own resource schedules, and ensuring the contractor that any bids received can be composed into a feasible plan. We introduce a bid evaluation process that incorporates cost, task coverage, temporal feasibility, and risk estimation. Using this evaluation process, we describe an empirical study of the tradeoffs between flexibility, plan feasibility, and cost in the context of our MAGNET multi-agent contracting market infrastructure.
14704175
Ontology-Driven Decision Support in Dynamic Supply-Chains
We describe an approach to building a highly configurable,semi-autonomous agent that can support users playing a variety of roles in a supply-chain trading environment. The agent's decision processes are composed of networks of simple services that are described using an OWL ontology. The ontology describes both the abstract data structures that are produced and consumed by individual services, as well as the business meaning of these data elements. This approach supports goal-directed composition of services in order to generate performance dashboards, as well as direct injection of user input at arbitrary points in the network.
35532626
Bid Selection Strategies for Multi-agent Contracting in the Presence of Scheduling Constraints
Bid evaluation in a multi-agent automated contracting environment presents a challenging search problem. We introduce a multicriterion, anytime bid evaluation strategy that incorporates cost, task coverage, temporal feasibility, and risk estimation into a simulated annealing framework. We report on an experimental evaluation using a set of increasingly informed search heuristics within simulated annealing. The results show that excess focus on improvement leads to faster improvement early on, at the cost of a lower likelihood of finding a solution that satisfies all the constraints. The most successful approach used a combination of random and focused bid selection methods, along with pruning and repeated restarts.
10289458
Design of supplier agents for an auction-based market
We are interested in supporting multi-agent contracting in which customer agents solicit the resources and capabilities of other self-interested supplier agents in order to accomplish their goals. Goals may involve the execution of multi-step tasks in which different tasks are contracted out to different suppliers. 
 
In this paper we focus on the design of supplier agents. The agents are designed to operate in the context of the MAGNET (Multi AGent NEgotiation Testbed) system, but the design could easily be adapted to other situations in which agents interact through a market infrastructure. 
 
MAGNET supplier agents can register their capabilities with the market, be notified of open and relevant requests for quotations, and submit bids that specify which tasks they are able to undertake, when they are available to perform those tasks, and at what price. Supplier agents attempt to maximize the value of their resources. 
 
The paper describes the detailed design of supplier agents and presents preliminary experimental results.
114125959
Documenting protocols in CLOS: keeping the promise of reuse
34266504
The BBC Television Management Information System
15801066
Dimensional Inference Using Symbol Lives
Scientific equations embedded in computer programs must obey the rules for dimensional consistency. Many efforts have been made to enforce these rules within computer programs. Some methods require the user to modify the program by adding dimensional information either as extensions to the programming language or else by using existing language facilities. The large amount of effort required to modify large scientific and engineering programs in this way is usually uneconomic and can be prone to error if done manually. Consequently, methods that do not require modifications to the program have been developed. However, these methods are limited in what they can discover and find it hard to tell the user where, precisely, in his program the error has been made. This paper describes a novel approach which employs the concept of symbol lives to analyse the dimensional implications of the users source code. The method, implemented for Fortran programs in the software engineering toolkit, WinFPT, is fast, systematic and identifies the locations of errors in the user's source code. Keywords--Software Engineering, Dimensional Analysis, Static Analysis, Fortran
173562095
The ABC's of digital type
39929543
Spike: A Six Legged Cube Style Robot
This paper describes a six legged cube based robot named ‘Spike’, which uses three axes of symmetry with a collinear pair of legs mounted on each axis. Spike is designed to implement a novel form of locomotion which uses a tilting and falling motion as a result of leg movements to form its gait. Due to the triangular symmetry inherent in the robot’s footprint, each step the robot takes is limited to one of three directions. At rest, the robot has three points of contact with the ground and all sides share equal length to form a tripedal stance. The gait is generated by directing a single leg toward the bisector of the opposing side, causing the robot to tumble, and fall into a new leg configuration. It was found that the robot was able to move along an angle of trajectory, where the accuracy of following the trajectory over time was dependant on the number of steps made.