1. CMSC 491M/691M Agent Architectures and Multi-Agent Systems UMBC Prof. Marie desJardins Spring 2003

2. Course information Prof desJardins  ECS 216, x53967, mariedj@cs.umbc.edumariedj@cs.umbc.edu Class mailing list  agents-class@listproc.umbc.edu agents-class@listproc.umbc.edu  To subscribe, send email to listproc@listproc.umbc.edu with the line: listproc@listproc.umbc.edu subscribe agents-class Your Name

3. Today’s overview Class structure and policies What’s an agent? Agent exercise Next class

4. Class structure: Syllabus Course page: cmsc691m.htmlcmsc691m.html Course syllabus: schedule.htmlschedule.html

5. Class structure: Participation This is a discussion class  Reading must be done in advance  Participation counts—a lot 45% of grade is related to class participation  Class discussion (35%) Do you attend class? Are you prepared? Have you done the reading? Have you thought about the discussion questions? Do you contribute to the discussion with insightful questions and comments?  Reading journal (5%)  Discussion leaders (5%)

6. Class structure: Agent architecture project Agent architecture project: 25% of grade  Download one of the architectures we learn about  Apply the architecture to a domain of your choice Deadlines:  Proposal due Feb. 19 (5% of project grade)  Report due Mar. 19 (70% of grade)  Demonstration week of Mar. 17 (25% of grade)

7. Class structure: MAS paper/project Agent architecture project: 25% of grade  Open-ended: Can be an implementation project or a final paper studying a topic in more depth Deadlines:  Proposal and bibliography due Apr. 14 (10%)  Draft report due May 5 (5%)  Presentation on May 7 or May 12 (20%)  Final report due May 16 (65%) You will also review another student’s report; this review will be worth 5% of your class grade

8. Policies Grading and academic honesty Plagiarism, citations

9. Original passage:  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Unacceptable summary:  I promise loyalty to the United States flag, and to the country for which it stands, one nation, with freedom and fairness for all. Plagiarism exercise

10. Plagiarism exercise II Original passage:  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Acceptable summary:  I promise to be loyal to the United States flag and to the USA itself: One united country that provides basic rights such as liberty and justice to all citizens.

11. What’s an agent? Weiss, p. 29 [after Wooldridge and Jennings]:  “An agent is a computer system that is situated in some environment, and that is capable of autonomous action in this environment in order to meet its design objectives.” Russell and Norvig, p. 7:  “An agent is just something that perceives and acts.” Rosenschein and Zlotkin, p. 4:  “The more complex the considerations that [a] machine takes into account, the more justified we are in considering our computer an ‘agent,’ who acts as our surrogate in an automated encounter.”

12. What’s an agent? II Ferber, p. 9:  “An agent is a physical or virtual entity a) Which is capable of acting in an environment, b) Which can communicate directly with other agents, c) Which is driven by a set of tendencies…, d) Which possesses resources of its own, e) Which is capable of perceiving its environment…, f) Which has only a partial representation of this environment…, g) Which possesses skills and can offer services, h) Which may be able to reproduce itself, i) Whose behavior tends towards satisfying its objectives, taking account of the resources and skills available to it and depending on its perception, its representations and the communications it receives.”

13. OK, so what’s an environment? Isn’t any system that has inputs and outputs situated in an environment of sorts?

14. What’s autonomy, anyway? Jennings and Wooldridge, p. 4:  “[In contrast with objects, we] think of agents as encapsulating behavior, in addition to state. An object does not encapsulate behavior: it has no control over the execution of methods – if an object x invokes a method m on an object y, then y has no control over whether m is executed or not – it just is. In this sense, object y is not autonomous, as it has no control over its own actions…. Because of this distinction, we do not think of agents as invoking methods (actions) on agents – rather, we tend to think of them requesting actions to be performed. The decision about whether to act upon the request lies with the recipient.” Is an if-then-else statement sufficient to create autonomy?

15. So now what? If those definitions aren’t useful, is there a useful definition? Should we bother trying to create “agents” at all?

16. Agent exercise Pick a card, any card…

17. After-action review or post-mortem, as the case may be… Did the class (agent community) find a consistent solution? How many agents had an instantiation? How many constraints were violated?  Why those ones? Any theories? What’s hard about this problem?

18. Next class Reading: Weiss Prologue and Chapter 1