Course Information
Class/Laboratory Schedule:
Three 50 minutes lectures per week (3-0-3)
Designation: Elective Course
Course Level: Undergraduate
Prerequisites
Prerequisite(s) by Topic:
- A familiarity with Programming Fundamentals.
- Communication and networking
- Building Web applications
Prerequisite Courses:
Catalog Description:
Agents, agent definitions and classification; Multi-agent systems (MAS) and their characteristics; Models of agency, architectures and languages, logics for MAS, deductive and practical reasoning agent, reactive and hybrid agents; Distributed problem solving and planning; Coordination mechanisms and strategies; Learning in MAS; Interaction, negotiation and coalition formation; Applications of agent technology (agents in electronic commerce and information retrieval.
Textbook(s):
M. Wooldridge, An Introduction to Multi-Agent Systems, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, February 2002.
Reference(s) and Other Material:
- Lin Padgham, Michael Winikoff, Developing Intelligent Agent Systems: A Practical Guide, John Wiley & Sons (2004).
- Gerhard Weiss, Multi-agent systems: A modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence, the MIT press, 1999, Amazon.
Course Outcomes:
After completion of this course, the student shall be able to:
- Identify and analyze what are agents, MAS and what are their characteristics.
- Distinct agents from other software paradigms (e.g. objects, expert systems).
- Understand the main application areas of agent-based solutions.
- Understand what are mobile agents? & what are their characteristics?
- Use the methods and tools of the AI (learning, adaptation, planning, searching, and reasoning) for designing and evaluating the agent systems.
- Understand how to construct agents capable of acting autonomously using contemporary (Java-based) framework for programming agents (e.g., JACK, JADE, CYBELE PRO, RETSINA) tools.
Topics Covered:
- Intelligent agent’s definitions and classification, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS).
- Models of agency and architectures.
- Logics for MAS.
- Learning in MAS.
- Deductive and practical reasoning agent.
- Reactive and hybrid agents.
- Agent communication languages and interaction protocols (KQML, FIPA-ACL, KIF) framework).
- Reaching agreements.
- Cooperative distributed problem solving and planning.
- Negotiation and coalition formation.
- Mobile agents.
- Formal methods in agent-oriented software engineering.
- Agent programming tools: JADE, IMPACT, RETSENA, JACK, CYBELEPRO.
- Agents-based application for Intelligent Tutoring System, for distributed network sensing, for traffic control system, E-Commerce, Internet browsing guide.