AgentLink Report of City University

Contact Address

Michael Schroeder
Department of Computing
School of Informatics
City University London
Northampton Sqare
London EC1V 0HB
UK

msch@cs.city.ac.uk
Tel.: ++44-171-477 8918
Fax: ++44-171-477 8587

Topics

Intelligent Agents and Logic Programming
Michael Schroeder works on logic-based intelligent agents for distributed diagnosis, information integration, argumentation and other applications. He has been defining and implementing an architecture for autonomous, model-based diagnosis agents whose core are extended logic programms. The expressive language is used to solve problems stemming from applications such as digital circuits, traffic control, integrity checking of a chemical database, alarm-correlation in cellular phone networks, diagnosis of an automatic mirror furnace, diagnosis of communication protocols, information integration, and argumentation.
- You may wish to try the diagnosis engine REVISE, (Mirror),
- Ultima Ratio is a project on visualisation of formal argumentation. The argumentation tool is online, and you can see how Hamlet is stuck in the conflict of killing Claudius or not. You can also surf through ultima's knowledge base and have a look at an animation of the installation (10meg). Ultima Ratio was exhibited in Linz, Austria, at Ars Electronica on 8-10 September 1998. Have a look at the stand.
- If you want to implement logical agents have a look at PVM-Prolog.
- Michael Schroeder. Autonomous, Model-based Diagnosis-Agents. Kluwer Academic Press. 1998.
- Michael Schroeder and Gerd Wagner. Distributed Diagnosis by Vivid Agents. In Proceedings of the first International Conference on Autonomous Agents AA97, Marina del Rey, CA, February 1997. ACM Press.
- Michael Schroeder, Rui Marques, Gerd Wagner, and Jose Cunha. CAP - Concurrent Action and Planning: Using PVM-Prolog to Implement Vivid Agents. In Proceedings of the fifth Conference on Practical Applications of Prolog, London, April 1997
Efficient Information Retrieval on the Internet
Julie McCann works on personal agents for efficient information retrieval on the internet. She investigate the use of metadata to increase searching effectiveness on the Internet and to determine optimisation parameters in data distribution and delivery systems using the Internet. The ESPRC-Project KENDRA addresses the problems of resource allocation and complex data object manipulation experienced by multi-media providers who aim to distribute their systems at a world wide level.
- McCann J. A,. Crane J.S., Kendra: Internet Distribution & Delivery System an introductory paper , Proc. SCS EuroMedia Conference, Leicester, UK., Society for Computer Simulation International, January 1998. pp134-140.
- MacFarlane A., Robertson S.E., McCann J.A.: Parallel Computing in Information Retrieval - An updated review. Journal of Documentation, Vol. 53, No 3. The Association for Information Management, June 1997, pp 274-315.
- McCann, J. A., MacFarlane A., Liddell H.M., : Management Tools for Distributed Interoperable Environments, High Performance Computing and Networking (HPCN), Belgium, April 1996. Lecture notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, April 1996, pp.689-695.
Mobile Agents and Constraints
David Gilbert works on agent migration and modelling agents using constraints. In a project on Distributed Concurrent Constraint Programming he is developing a language for distributed problem solving using constraint-based reasoning. The language will be used to solve distributed scheduling applications and negociation algorithms.
- A. A. Letichevsky and D. R. Gilbert, A general theory of action languages, Cybernetics and System Analysis, 1, 1998, pp 16-37.
- David Gilbert, Can computational logic provide a paradigm for both the specification and implementation of concurrent systems?, Special Issue of ACM Computing Surveys, Volume 28, Number 2, pp 303-305: June 1996
- L. Brim, D.R. Gilbert, J-M Jacquet, M. Kretinsky, A Process Algebra for Synchronous Concurrent Constraint Programming, Proceedings of ALP96: Fifth International Conference on Algebraic and Logic Programming, pp 165-178, Springer LNCS volume 1139, 1996.