• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.125-134
• /
• 2014

This paper proposes a multi-agent message transport architecture to support application areas which need fast message communications for close collaboration among agents. In the FIPA(Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents) agent platform, all message transfer services among agents are in charge of a conceptual entity named ACC(Agent Communication Channel). In our multi-agent message transport architecture, the ACC is represented as a set of system agents named MTSA(Message Transfer Service Agent). The MTSA enables close collaboration among agents by supporting asynchronous communication, by using Reactor pattern to handle agent input messages efficiently, and by selecting optimal message transfer protocols according to the relative positional relationships of sender agents and receiver agents. The multi-agent framework SMAF(Small Multi-Agent Framework), which is implemented on the proposed multi-agent message transport architecture, shows better performance on message transfer among agents than JADE(Java Agent Development Environment) which is a well-known FIPA-compliant multi-agent framework. The faster the speed of message transfer of a multi-agent architecture becomes, the wider application areas the architecture can support.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.17-35
• /
• 2019

Call centers do not simply play a role of responding to customers' calls, but they have developed into a core unit for maintaining competitiveness through services, marketing, or sales. Since the service quality of call centers heavily affects customer satisfaction, organizations have focused on enhancing it by reducing waiting time and increasing service level. One of the techniques, which improve the service quality of call centers, is to employ multi-skilled agents that can handle more than one type of calls. This study deals with three issues relevant to multi-skilled agents. First, we analyze how the way of allocating a specific group of agents to a set of skills affects the performance of call centers. Secondly, we investigate the relationship between the number of multi-skilled agents and the performance of call centers. Finally, we examine the impact of agent selection rules on the performance of call centers. Two selection rules are compared : the first rule is to assign a call to any available agent at random while the other rule is to assign a call preferably to single-skilled agents over multi-skilled agents when applicable. Based on simulation experiments, we suggest three implications. First, as the length of cycles in the agent-skill configuration network becomes longer, call centers achieve higher service level and shorter waiting time. Secondly, simulation results show that as the portion of multi-skilled agents increases, the performance of call centers improves. However, most of the improvement is attained when the portion of multi-skilled agents is relatively low. Finally, the agent selection rules do not significantly affect the call centers' performance, but the rule of preferring single-skilled agents tends to distribute the workload among agents more equally.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.295-306
• /
• 2007

It is well known that mathematical solutions for multi-agent planning problems are very difficult to obtain due to the complexity of mutual interactions among multi-agents. Most of the past research results are thus based on the probabilistic completeness. However, the practicality and effectiveness of the solution from the probabilistic completeness is significantly reduced by heavy computational burden. In this paper, we propose a practically applicable solution technique for multi-agent planning problems, which assures a reasonable computation time and a real world application for more than 3 multi-agents, for the case of general shaped paths in agent movement. First, to reduce the computation time, an extended collision map is developed and utilized for detecting potential collisions and obtaining collision-free solutions for multi-agents. Second, a priority for multi-agents is considered for successive and interactive modifications of the agent movements with lower priority. Various solutions using speed reduction and time delay of the relevant agents are investigated and compared in terms of the computation time. A practical implementation is finally provided for three different types of agents to emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed interactive approach to multi-agent planning problems.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.46-57
• /
• 2006

It is well known that mathematical solutions for multi-agent planning problems are very difficult to obtain due to the complexity of mutual interactions among multi-agent. Most of the past research results thus are based on the probabilistic completeness. However, the practicality and effectiveness of the solution from the probabilistic completeness is significantly reduced by heavy computational burden. In this paper, we propose a practically applicable solution technique for multi-agent planning problems, which assures a reasonable computation time and a real world application for more than 3 multi-agents for the case of general shaped paths in agent movement. First, to reduce the computation time, a collision map is utilized for detecting potential collisions and obtaining collision-free solutions for multi-agents. Second, to minimize the maximum of multi-agent task execution time, a method is developed for selecting an optimal priority order. Simulations are finally provided for more than 20 agents to emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed interactive approach to multi-agent planning problems.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.9 no.1
• /
• pp.1-21
• /
• 2003

As electronic commerce(EC) has grown rapidly, agents that work on the behalf of humans on the Internet are being used actively. However, most of the EC agents have some problems. They fail to fully support buyers' decision making behaviors and sellers' information supply activities. Further, they are not suited for mobile computing environment. In this paper, we introduce a Multi-Mobile Agents System(MMAS) that has been developed according to a conceptual framework that corrects the aforementioned problems. Built by using Tokyo IBM ASDK(Aglets Software Development Kit) for the area of hotel reservation, the system consists of buyer- and seller-side agents that interact with each other; buyer-side agents help buyers to make purchasing decisions by collecting and analyzing information through applying a multi-criteria decision making method, while seller-side agents substitute fur sellers by managing databases and providing real-time information to the buyer-side agents. In this system, multiple agents perform their shared tasks at the same time in order to increase efficiency. Users do not have to keep the connection with the system because they are notified when tasks are done.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
• /
• 2001.01a
• /
• pp.73-77
• /
• 2001

In this paper, we propose a virtual action system based on information agents, We call the system the MultiHammer, MultiHammer can be used for studying and analyzing online actions. MuiltiHammer provides functions of implement-ing a meta online action site and an experiment environ-ment. We have been using MultiHammer as an experiment as an experiment environment for BiddinBot. BiddingBot aims at assisting users to bid simultaneously in multiple online auctions. In order to bid simultaneously in multiple online auctions. In order to analyze the behavior of BiddngBot, we need to pur-chase a lot of items. It is hard for us to prepare a lot of fund to show usability and advantage of BiddingBot. MultiHam-mer enables us to effectively analyze the behavior of BiddingBot. MultiHammer consists of three types of agents for information collecting data storing and auctioning. Agents for information wrappers. To make agent work as wrarp-pers, we heed to realize software modules for each online action site. Implementing these modules reguires a lot of time and patience. To address this problem, we designed a support mechanism for developing the modules. Agents for data storing record the data gathered by agents for informa-tion collecting. Agents for auctioning provide online services using data recorded by agents for data storing. By recording the activities in auction sites. MultiHammer can recreate any situation and trace auction for experimentation, Users can participate in virtual using the same information in real online auctions. Users also participate in real auc-tions via wrapper agents for information collecting

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.8B no.6
• /
• pp.587-594
• /
• 2001

Multi-agent system fits to the distributed and open internet environments. In a multi-agent system, agents must cooperate with each other through a coordination procedure, when the conflicts between agents arise. Where those are caused by the point that each action acts for a purpose separately without coordination. But previous researches for coordination methods in multi-agent system have a deficiency that they cannot solve correctly the cooperation problem between agents, which have different goals in dynamic environment. In this paper, we suggest the automatic coordination model for multi-agent system using neural network and reinforcement learning in dynamic environment. We have competitive experiment between multi-agents that have complexity environment and diverse activity. And we analysis and evaluate effect of activity of multi-agents. The results show that the proposed method is proper.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.155-169
• /
• 2003

A multi-agent technology has emerged as new paradigms that can flexibly and promptly cope with various environmental changes and complex problems. Accordingly, many studies have been carried out to establish multi-agent systems in an effort to solve dynamic problems in many fields. However, most previous research on the multi-agent frameworks aimed at, on the behalf of a user, exchanging and sharing information among agents, reusing agents, and suggesting job cooperation in order to integrate and assimilate heterogeneous agents. That is, their frameworks mainly focused on the basic functions of general multi-agents. Therefore, they are not suitable to the development of the proper system for a specific field such as a negotiation. The goal of this research is to design a multi-agent framework for the negotiation system that supports the evaluation of the negotiation messages, management of the negotiation messages, and message exchanges among the negotiation agents.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.41-53
• /
• 2000

The purpose of the paper is communication between multi-agents for student's learning at web based collaborative learning. First, this study investigated the whole contents and characteristics of an agent system and discussed KQML, communication language between multi-agents. Also, we suggested architecture of an agent based system for collaborative learning and interaction method between agents using KQML. We design어 and implemented collaborative learning system using Java programming language, and we also demonstrate the efficiency of collaborative learning system by communication between multi-agents through experiments.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.8B no.6
• /
• pp.601-608
• /
• 2001

The automated assignment of multiple tasks to executing agents is a key problem in the area of multi-agent systems. In many domains, significant savings can be achieved by reallocating tasks among agents with different costs for handling tasks. The automation of task reallocation among self-interested agents requires that the individual agents use a common negotiation protocol that prescribes how they have to interact in order to come to an agreement on "who does what". In this paper, we introduce the multi-agent Traveling Salesman Problem(TSP) as an example of task reallocation problem, and suggest the Vickery auction as an interagent negotiation protocol for solving this problem. In general, auction-based protocols show several advantageous features: they are easily implementable, they enforce an efficient assignment process, and they guarantce an agreement even in scenarios in which the agents possess only very little domain-specific Knowledge. Furthermore Vickrey auctions have the additional advantage that each interested agent bids only once and that the dominant strategy is to bid one′s true valuation. In order to apply this market-based protocol into task reallocation among self-interested agents, we define the profit of each agent, the goal of negotiation, tasks to be traded out through auctions, the bidding strategy, and the sequence of auctions. Through several experiments with sample multi-agent TSPs, we show that the task allocation can improve monotonically at each step and then finally an optimal task allocation can be found with this protocol.