Industrial and Practical Applications of DAI – Ori Liel

1. Industrial and Practical Applications of DAI – Ori Liel Agents in action!

2. In this lecture: • Characteristics which make problems fit for an agent-based solution. • A broad overview of practical DAI applications. • An elaboration on one specific application – the RAPPID system • The Industrial life-cycle and how it bears on agent systems

3. Characteristics which make problems fit for an agent-based solution

4. * A note about OOD design • Advantages of Object-Oriented design: • More thoroughly explored (theoretically) • Better practical support Therefore one must also ask what is the drawback of an Object Oriented solution.

5. Characteristics – Modularity • A modular problem is one that can easily be divided into sub-problems. • Assign an agent to each problem * Regular Object-Oriented design is also suitable.

6. Characteristics – Decentralization • A decentralized problem can be decomposed into stand-alone processes. • No main thread of control • Little inter-process communication • Advantages of decentralization: • Parallelism • Eliminates wasteful method calls • Suits modern industrial approaches – push decision making down as much as you can * OOD requires multi-threading

7. Characteristics – Changeability • A problem which may change often • Agent solution is modular + decentralized

8. Characteristics – Open environments • When a problem is situated in an environment which is: • Dynamic • Agents are reactive and monitor their environment • Elements of uncertainty • No full knowledge of environment • Non-deterministic • Agents taught to plan with partial info, and backtrack if necessary • Finally, agents as a natural metaphor

9. An overview of practical DAS applications

10. Applications • Simulations • What could we want to simulate? • An economic system • A biological system (ant-farm, beehive) • Traffic flow… • What makes these problems suitable for agent-technology? • Decentralized • Changeable • Dynamic environments

11. Applications – cont’d • Some available simulation tools: • Echois a simulation tool developed to investigate mechanisms which regulate diversity and information-processing in systems comprised of many interacting adaptive agents, or complex adaptive systems (CAS). Echo agents interact via combat, trade and mating and develop strategies to ensure survival in resource-limited environments. http://www.santafe.edu/projects/echo/echo.html#intro • Swarm is a software package for multi-agent simulation of complex systems, originally developed at the Santa Fe Institute. Swarm is intended to be a useful tool for researchers in a variety of disciplines. The basic architecture of Swarm is the simulation of collections of concurrently interacting agents: with this architecture, we can implement a large variety of agent based models. http://www.swarm.org/intro.html • SugarScapeUnlike many other research-oriented computer models, Sugarscape uses the bottom-up approach known as agent-based modeling. http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/sugarscape/

12. Applications – cont’d • E-Commerce • What are the needs? • Comparison shopping • Auctions • What makes these problems suitable for agent-technology? • The dynamic environment of the internet • Agents as natural metaphors • Auctions require communication

13. Applications – cont’d • E-commerce – Wooldrige’s examples revisited • Auctions: • Auction bot (recently deceased) • Kasbah – transformed to travel resource • Comparison shopping: • Jango – web site for sale • Bargain Finder – alive and kicking

14. Applications – cont’d • Manufacturing • What are the needs? • Support for product-design process • Planning and scheduling • Real-time control • What makes these problems suitable for agent-technology? • Virtually all of the things we mentioned before

15. Applications – cont’d • Manufacturing – cont’d • Product design • RAPPID – elaborated later! • Planning and scheduling • AARIA • Daewoo’s system • Mature – applied at Daewoo Motors’ integrated automobile production facility in Korea • Real-time control • ARCHON • Mission: to integrate pre-existing expert systems

16. Applications – cont’d • Computer games (separate lecture) • Air traffic control • OASIS in Australia • Medicine • Patient monitoring

17. The RAPPID system Responsible Agents for Product-Process Integrated Design

18. The RAPPID system: • Imagine you’re designing a product: • Product has many components • Each component has many characteristics • Weight • Space • Power consumption • Each component is designed by a different team, and teams could be scattered across the globe • Goal: • Achieving an optimized design in a reasonable time

19. RAPPID – What does it aim to fix? • Problems with current design approaches: • Problem: often, disputes about resources are settled through politics rather than logic • Solution: resources are commodities in a marketplace. • Problem: A small inaccuracy in Chief Engineer’s vision can be fatal. • Solution: design as constraint satisfaction problem.

20. RAPPID – Solution to 1st problem • The Marketplace • Designers’ buying power determined at offset. • Characteristics assigned initial price • supply-&-demand principles set prices for the different characteristics. • Isn’t it nice how you can suddenly trade electrical power more space?

21. RAPPID - Solution to 1st – cont’d • Agent architecture • Components are ‘interface agents’ for designers. • Monitor the market for designer • Make suggestions or even transactions. • Characteristics are agents • Perhaps a case of ‘seeing agents everywhere’?

22. RAPPID – illustration

23. RAPPID – Solution to second problem • The basic idea: chief engineer sees which characteristics are ‘slacking’ • He buys them out and uses the money to insert more of other characteristics to the simulation • Converging the design space

24. The Industrial life-cycle and how it bears on agent systems When agents leave the lab

25. Industrial life-cycle - overview • Requirement definition • Positioning • Specification • Design • Implementation • Comissioning • Operation • Decomissioning

26. Industrial life-cycle – Requirement definition • Talk about needs • “Market analysis reveals that we are losing sales to competitors who are offering sport utility vehicles (SUV’s), a niche in which we currently have no product offering” • Agent Systems • Remember there are more problems that can be automated

27. Industrial life-cycle - Positioning • define the project’s relationship to other projects in the enterprise. • “Our current product divisions are luxury auto, economy auto, minivan, and light truck. The minivan and light truck divisions seem the best candidates to host the new SUV offering…”

28. Industrial life-cycle - Specification • What the project will do, but not how. • “We benchmark the performance characteristics of our competitors’ SUV offerings…” • The result is a list of the features and characteristics of the new vehicle.

29. Industrial life-cycle - design • Decide how to achieve the functions in the specification • Product-engineering deigns a new vehicle, Process-engineering designs the factory that will make it… • Agent-systems • Design considerations • What in a system becomes an agent? • What types of agents to use? • How to divide labor between agents?

30. Industrial life-cycle (design)– cont’d • Completing design & testing • Role-Playing • Figure out the rules that should guide each agent • Maybe discover need for more/less agents • Formal analysis • Logical analysis • Simulation

31. Industrial life-cycle - implementation • Constructing the system • Purchasing negotiation contracts for the equipment needed to construct the new vehicle. A plant is selected to house the new line; old equipment is removed, new equipment is installed

32. Industrial life-cycle – implementation (in agent systems) • Hardware considerations • General-purpose computer or specially designed parallel architecture? • Software considerations • Use existing tools or create your own? • In science • suitable tools may not exist • Constructing tools part of the mission • In industry • Making new tools consumes time • Designers may not be agent experts

33. Summary • We talked about characteristics which make a problem suitable for an agent-based solution • We touched over some of the areas in the industry in which DAI is used • We examined the RAPPID system • We talked about the industrial life-cycle of an agent system