Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology PDF
Preview Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF AGENT-BASED TECHNOLOGY Edited by Haiping Xu Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology Edited by Haiping Xu Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Ivona Lovric Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published March, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected] Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology, Edited by Haiping Xu p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0276-2 Contents Preface VII Chapter 1 Agent-Based System Applied to Smart Distribution Grid Operation 1 D. Issicaba, M. A. Rosa, W. Franchin and J. A. Peças Lopes Chapter 2 Conflict Resolution in Resource Federation with Intelligent Agent Negotiation 21 Wai-Khuen Cheng and Huah-Yong Chan Chapter 3 Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Agents in Electronic Auctions 45 Jacob Sow, Patricia Anthony and Chong Mun Ho Chapter 4 Developing a Multi-Issue E-Negotiation System for E-Commerce with JADE 71 Bala M. Balachandran Chapter 5 Adaptive Virtual Environments: The Role of Intelligent Agents 87 Marcus S. de Aquino and Fernando da F. de Souza Chapter 6 Software Agent Finds Its Way in the Changing Environment 111 Algirdas Sokas Preface Over the past decade, there has been a strong revival of interest in agent-based technology, with a recognition that it impacts many areas such as artificial intelligence, distributed computing, and software engineering. Agent-based technology can be used to solve a variety of business and technology problems. Examples of such applications include electronic commerce, grid computing, social networks, and adaptive virtual environment. In an agent-based system, software agents with sufficient intelligence and autonomy are adopted to perform tasks such as sensing, planning, scheduling, reasoning and decision-making. An agent can either work independently or coordinate with other agents to accomplish tasks and missions. In the former case, an agent typically generates a set of goals based on its motivation, and also a list of plans for achieving its goals. In the later case, a collection of agents are structured as a multi-agent system (MAS), where a coordination model based on message passing among agents is defined to provide a uniform interface for their interactions. In this book, we provide a collection of practical applications of agent- based technology. Chapter 1 demonstrates how agent-based technology can be applied to smart distribution grid operation. It presents an agent-based architecture which can be developed to support the smooth modernization of the power distribution grids. Chapter 2 discusses how to resolve conflicts in resource federation with agent negotiation. A scenario of resource federation in grid computing is illustrated to show the adoption of creative negotiation for conflict resolution. Chapter 3 and 4 provide two application examples of agent-based technology in electronic commerce, where homogeneous and heterogeneous agents are defined and adopted for electronic auctions (Chapter 3), and a multi-issue e-negotiation system is developed for electronic commerce (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 presents an innovative application of intelligent agents in adaptive virtual environments. By using intelligent agents, a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment can be tuned into an adaptive system, which improves the quality of human-computer interface. Chapter 6 provides another example of using intelligent agent to find the shortest path between two points in a changing drawing environment. Although we present quite a few practical application examples of using agent-based technology in this book, the collection of such application areas is far from completion. The purpose of this book is to provide examples of recent advances in agent-based VIII Preface systems and demonstrate how agent-based technology can be used to solve practical problems. It is our hope that this book will not only help the researchers and practitioners to understand the practical usage of agent-based technology, but also provides them hints of using agent-based technology in innovative ways. This book has been a collaborative effort, which wouldn’t be possible for us to complete it without the substantial contribution and generous assistance we received from many people. We are most grateful, of course, to the authors of the chapters for the quality of their research. We are also especially grateful for the generous support from the InTech Open Access Publisher. At InTech, we thank all those who assisted in this book, especially Ivona Lovric for her much hard work on communicating with the authors and helping put all chapters together. Haiping Xu, PhD Associate Professor Director of Concurrent Software Engineering Laboratory Computer and Information Science Department University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Massachusetts USA
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