Rune Gustavsson, and Martin Fredriksson     
SoC group PM
University of Karlskrona/Ronneby
SWEDEN


Participation in
	SIG  Intelligent Information Agents

Contact: Anders Enander



Background:

The SoC - Societies of Computation - group at University of Karlskrona/Ronneby
is participating in several industry related international large-scale projects,
where multi-agent systems plays an increasingly important role. 
Among those projects are:


- EC ACTS MARINER AC 333, Multi-Agent Architecture for Distributed-IN Load
  Control and Overload Protection.


- IT in Energy, an international consortium on new business opportunities based
  on a deregulated market and emergent technologies such as the electric grid as
  a communication media. The project start in January 1999 and is a continuation 
  of the ongoing project ISES - Information/Society/Energy/Systems.
  The annual budget is in the order of 3 M US dollars during three years.


- SERVUS - Sustainable products as embedded functions - a Swedish consortia 
  aiming at the transition from selling metal-ware products to selling of 
  functions - e.g. smart communicating equipment. Industrial partners include
  ABB, Ericsson, Electrolux, and Volvo. The project starts in January 1999.
  The annual budget is in the order of 4 M US dollars during 6 years.


Our university is appointed to coordinate the latter two projects. 

In all of these projects there is a need to: 

	1. Integrate smart equipment with Internet technologies.
           Mobile access from anywhere to everything. 

	2. Develop smart information services.

	3. Horizontal integration of societies of agents, e.g., in the MARINER 
           project we address societies of mobile agents and stationary agents, 
           deliberative and light-weight (insect-like) agents,
           for different services.

	4. Use of re-use.

Given this background, we are eager to exchange ideas and results within SIGs
of AgentLink. As a matter of fact one of our researchers, Fredrik Ygge,
will participate in the SIG on Computational markets. Another member of
our research group, Paul Davidsson, will act as an editor of the upcoming
AgentLink Newsletter. We would also like to participate in your SIG on
Intelligent Information Agents, our CKO and manager of our Interactive 
System Laboratory Anders Enander, and in SIG on Methodologies/Software,
Paul Davidsson and myself, Rune Gustavsson.


Basic approach:

From industrial point of view the technology as such plays 
a minor role, of course. The main concern is of IT alignment to business
processes, i.e., to demonstrate a positive relationship between 
IT-solutions and the accepted financial measures of performance.

We believe that current trends of component-based development and agent 
technologies will supply a set of flexible packages of solutions
to provide effective inputs to the Business Pro-cess Modeling (BPM).


Our basic approach is:

- To use and adapt the current development of the CommonKADS, 
  a de-facto standard methodology for industrial knowledge intensive systems, 
  as a tool to develop application oriented frameworks and as an interface 
  to BPM methods and technologies. This
  theme has been elaborated in our Homebot applications.

- To have a service-oriented view of the active information infrastructure. 
  We have here developed several prototypes on the theme of active information
  nets connecting end users with smart embedded equipment, e.g., ‘Active 
  Notice Board’, ‘Active Documents’, and ‘Smart Cupboard’.

- Development of prototypes and assessments and ideas in close interaction
  with our applications. The role of our Interactive System Laboratory is
  here crucial.

Some additional information is available on our homepage. 
URL: www.sikt.hk-r.se/~soc