Rob Kremer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Rob Kremer

Research paper thumbnail of Practical issues in detecting bvroken social commitments

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Internet-enabled collaborative agent-based supply chains

This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new ... more This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems), the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled

Research paper thumbnail of Practical Issues in Detecting Broken Social Commitments

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

An open system should admit agents from many sources and these agents may have conflicting goals.... more An open system should admit agents from many sources and these agents may have conflicting goals. Therefore, some actions that an agent would like to perform could be detrimental to other agents. Such actions can be either acceptable or unacceptable within a given system. Social norms define what actions are acceptable and unacceptable within a given society. There should be

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling Efficient Emergent Agent Conversations in Collaborative Agent Systems

Research paper thumbnail of Developing Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Using Collaborative Agents

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intellig... more Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. This paper presents some preliminary results of our two ongoing research projects related to the development of a new collaborative agent system architecture for intelligent manufacturing systems. The main features of the proposed architecture are described; some domain independent mechanisms and components are briefly introduced; and a case study is presented.

Research paper thumbnail of Principled approach to construct complex conversation protocols

Research paper thumbnail of Implementing the Internet Enabled Supply Chain through a Collaborative Agent System

This paper presents some preliminary results of our ongoing research projects related to the deve... more This paper presents some preliminary results of our ongoing research projects related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems, the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled complex supply chain for a large manufacturing enterprise. The main features of the proposed architecture are described, some domain independent mechanisms and components are briefly introduced, and a case study of supply chain management is presented. Keywords Agents, Collaborative Agent Systems, Supply Chain, Internet. 1. INTRODUCTION The Internet has evolved from an information space to a market space in the past few years. Electronic Commerce has become a very active research area within in a short period, with agent technology being recognized as a promising approach for its implementa...

Research paper thumbnail of Online Testing and Grading Using WebCT in Computer Science

Abstract: The following paper reports on an experiment with online testing and automatic grading ... more Abstract: The following paper reports on an experiment with online testing and automatic grading in a large, undergraduate computer science course in artificial intelligence. WebCT was used to construct, administer, and score a midterm examination made up of randomly selected ...

Research paper thumbnail of Architecture and design of a holonic visual interface

The holonic visual interface is an intelligent agent-based interface for the human visualisation ... more The holonic visual interface is an intelligent agent-based interface for the human visualisation of holonic systems and for their control. Such visual interfaces must also be appropriate for inter-human co-ordination. This is a human-system distributed interface which facilitates integrated collaboration between humans and systems. These interfaces need to be utilizable at many levels of a manufacturing or other distributed agent-based system, operating concurrently

Research paper thumbnail of Incorporating Conversation Managers into Multi-agent Systems

This paper presents ongoing research into enhancing high-level communication capability in multi-... more This paper presents ongoing research into enhancing high-level communication capability in multi-agent systems through modeling agent conversations and incorporating distributed conversation managers. First, conversations are formulated as task-oriented descriptive units, called conversation schemata, by capturing interaction patterns, task constraints, and task-related information of agents. After verification, conversation schemata are translated into production rule sets and implemented as Java threads. Second, coordination of conversations is enabled by incorporating a set of distributed agents---conversation managers. A `proof-ofconcept ' implementation shows the potential of this approach. KEYWORDS Software agent, agent communication, agent conversation, schemata 1. INTRODUCTION Two recent developments in agent technologies---both theoretical and practical---have made it possible to enhance high-level communication capability by incorporating conversation management and co...

Research paper thumbnail of Evolving Social Commitment Based Protocols Using MAPC

Currently, agent designers and programmers must work extensively to design, describe, test and im... more Currently, agent designers and programmers must work extensively to design, describe, test and implement the communication protocols used in multi agent systems. The design of the protocols is on an imperative basis. The potential exists for the designer and programmer to play a smaller role, though. This role would simply be to input a description of required activities, or to describe it declaratively. This paper describes MAPC (multi agent protocol creator) which makes it possible to evolve a protocol through the genetic programming of agent behaviours. These behaviours are capable of performing a communication-based task. Once the behaviours have been evolved, it is fairly simple to distil the behaviours into a social commitment based communication protocol. MAPC is currently able to evolve simple protocols, and is in active development in order to make it possible to evolve more complex protocols.

Research paper thumbnail of <title>Internet-enabled collaborative agent-based supply chains</title>

Network Intelligence: Internet-based Manufacturing, 2000

ABSTRACT This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems), the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled complex supply chain for a large manufacturing enterprise. The general collaborative agent system architecture with the basic communication and cooperation services, domain independent components, prototypes and mechanisms are described. Benefits of implementing Internet enabled supply chains with the proposed infrastructure are discussed. A case study on Internet enabled supply chain management is presented.

Research paper thumbnail of Groupware concept mapping techniques

Proceedings of the 12th annual international conference on Systems documentation technical communications at the great divide - SIGDOC '94, 1994

... groupware concept mapping tool designed to support the knowledge processes of geographically ... more ... groupware concept mapping tool designed to support the knowledge processes of geographically dispersed ccmurmnities. Introduction Concept maps are used to structureargument forms and express relationships between ideas [10]. ...

Research paper thumbnail of A collaborative agent-based infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative enterprises

The Internet has evolved very rapidly from an information space to a market space over the past f... more The Internet has evolved very rapidly from an information space to a market space over the past few years. There is a tendency towards implementing real-world agent-based applications based on the Internet. This paper presents some results of our recent research work towards an infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative agent systems. The infrastructure and the related supporting services, components, prototypes and

Research paper thumbnail of A Schema-Based Approach to Specifying Conversation Policies

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

... AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 375-418. 11. JAFMAS: A Java-based Agent Framework for Multiagent Systems ... more ... AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 375-418. 11. JAFMAS: A Java-based Agent Framework for Multiagent Systems Development and Implementation, Deepika Chauhan, ECECS Department, University of Cincinnati, USA, 1997, http://www. ececs. uc. edu/~ abaker/JAFMAS/ 12. ...

Research paper thumbnail of An Architecture for Modeling Internet-based Collaborative Agent Systems

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2001

This paper describes an architecture for modeling cooperating systems of communicating agents. Th... more This paper describes an architecture for modeling cooperating systems of communicating agents. The authors' goal is not that of providing a framework to implement multi-agents systems (there are tools-such as CORBA, Java and DCOM-that do an excellent job on that), but rather to provide an architectural metaphor upon which collaborative multi-agent systems could be modeled. The approach is based on requirements defined with a practical view of the communicational and resource-oriented nature of distributed collaborative multi-agent systems.

Research paper thumbnail of A Performative Type Hierarchy and Other Interesting Considerations in the Design of the CASA Agent Architecture

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

In this paper, we describe several interesting design decisions we have taken (with respect to in... more In this paper, we describe several interesting design decisions we have taken (with respect to inter-agent messaging) in the reengineered CASA architecture for agent communication and services. CASA is a new architecture designed from the ground up; it is influenced by the major agent architectures such as FIPA, CORBA, and KQML but is intended to be independent (which doesn't imply incompatible). The primary goals are flexibility, extendibility, simplicity, and ease of use. The lessons learned in the earlier implementation have fed the current design of the system. Among the most interesting of the design issues are the use of performatives that form a type lattice, which allows for observers, who do not necessarily understand all the performatives, to nonetheless understand a conversation at an appropriate semantic level. Furthermore, we found it difficult to arrange a portion of the FIPA performatives in a lattice without duplication and complexity. We solved this problem by diverging from FIPA performatives by separating a lot of the performatives into a separate lattice of acts, which work with the performatives, but greatly simplify and enhance the semantic interpretation of the messages. Yet another innovation is the addition of several new fields within a KQML-style message header that allow for further semantic interpretation of the message by an observer who does not necessarily understand the content language. The traditional FIPA fields to, from, sender, and receiver have been extended to include agent (the requester of a service), and actor (the party designated responsible for performing the action specified in the performative/act). These new design considerations add a great deal of flexibility and integrity to an agent communications architecture.

Research paper thumbnail of Visual and Textual Knowledge Representation in DESIRE

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1999

In this paper, graphical, conceptual graph-based representations for knowledge structures in the ... more In this paper, graphical, conceptual graph-based representations for knowledge structures in the compositional development method DESIRE for knowledge-based and multi-agent systems are presented, together with a graphical editor based on the Constraint Graph environment. Moreover, a translator is described which translates these graphical representations to textual representations in DESIRE. The strength of the combined environment is a powerful --yet easy-to-use -framework to support the development of knowledge based and multi-agent systems. Finally, a mapping is presented from DESIRE, that is based on order sorted predicate logic, to Conceptual Graphs. [SPACE] -(BETW) -[BRICK]

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling effective and emergent agent conversations

Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Autonomous agents - AGENTS '00, 2000

To enable effective and emergent conversations among software agents in open and distributed envi... more To enable effective and emergent conversations among software agents in open and distributed environment, this paper proposes a schema-based conversation modeling and manager-based conversation management approach. Conversation policies and interaction patterns among a group of agents are formulated and organized into class hierarchies of goal-directed conversation schemata, which are "sender-initialized" group interaction patterns and "receiver-responded" coordination constraints. Colored Petri Nets formalism is used for verifying conversation schemata. Using conversation schemata, conversation managers are constructed to mediate and administer conversations.

Research paper thumbnail of Using a performative subsumption lattice to support commitment-based conversations

Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - AAMAS '05, 2005

In this paper, we arrange FIPA's ACL performatives to form a subsumption lattice (ontology) and a... more In this paper, we arrange FIPA's ACL performatives to form a subsumption lattice (ontology) and apply a theory of social commitments to achieve a simplified and observable model of agent behaviour. Using this model, it is straight forward to model agents' social commitments (obligations) based solely on observation of messages passed between the agents (such observation is supported by our agent infrastructure system). Furthermore, owing to the performatives being in a subsumption lattice, it is relatively easy for an observer to infer social commitment relationships even if the observer does not understand the details of messages or even the exact performatives used (so long as the observer has access to the performatives ontology).

Research paper thumbnail of Practical issues in detecting bvroken social commitments

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Internet-enabled collaborative agent-based supply chains

This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new ... more This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems), the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled

Research paper thumbnail of Practical Issues in Detecting Broken Social Commitments

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

An open system should admit agents from many sources and these agents may have conflicting goals.... more An open system should admit agents from many sources and these agents may have conflicting goals. Therefore, some actions that an agent would like to perform could be detrimental to other agents. Such actions can be either acceptable or unacceptable within a given system. Social norms define what actions are acceptable and unacceptable within a given society. There should be

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling Efficient Emergent Agent Conversations in Collaborative Agent Systems

Research paper thumbnail of Developing Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Using Collaborative Agents

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intellig... more Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. This paper presents some preliminary results of our two ongoing research projects related to the development of a new collaborative agent system architecture for intelligent manufacturing systems. The main features of the proposed architecture are described; some domain independent mechanisms and components are briefly introduced; and a case study is presented.

Research paper thumbnail of Principled approach to construct complex conversation protocols

Research paper thumbnail of Implementing the Internet Enabled Supply Chain through a Collaborative Agent System

This paper presents some preliminary results of our ongoing research projects related to the deve... more This paper presents some preliminary results of our ongoing research projects related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems, the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled complex supply chain for a large manufacturing enterprise. The main features of the proposed architecture are described, some domain independent mechanisms and components are briefly introduced, and a case study of supply chain management is presented. Keywords Agents, Collaborative Agent Systems, Supply Chain, Internet. 1. INTRODUCTION The Internet has evolved from an information space to a market space in the past few years. Electronic Commerce has become a very active research area within in a short period, with agent technology being recognized as a promising approach for its implementa...

Research paper thumbnail of Online Testing and Grading Using WebCT in Computer Science

Abstract: The following paper reports on an experiment with online testing and automatic grading ... more Abstract: The following paper reports on an experiment with online testing and automatic grading in a large, undergraduate computer science course in artificial intelligence. WebCT was used to construct, administer, and score a midterm examination made up of randomly selected ...

Research paper thumbnail of Architecture and design of a holonic visual interface

The holonic visual interface is an intelligent agent-based interface for the human visualisation ... more The holonic visual interface is an intelligent agent-based interface for the human visualisation of holonic systems and for their control. Such visual interfaces must also be appropriate for inter-human co-ordination. This is a human-system distributed interface which facilitates integrated collaboration between humans and systems. These interfaces need to be utilizable at many levels of a manufacturing or other distributed agent-based system, operating concurrently

Research paper thumbnail of Incorporating Conversation Managers into Multi-agent Systems

This paper presents ongoing research into enhancing high-level communication capability in multi-... more This paper presents ongoing research into enhancing high-level communication capability in multi-agent systems through modeling agent conversations and incorporating distributed conversation managers. First, conversations are formulated as task-oriented descriptive units, called conversation schemata, by capturing interaction patterns, task constraints, and task-related information of agents. After verification, conversation schemata are translated into production rule sets and implemented as Java threads. Second, coordination of conversations is enabled by incorporating a set of distributed agents---conversation managers. A `proof-ofconcept ' implementation shows the potential of this approach. KEYWORDS Software agent, agent communication, agent conversation, schemata 1. INTRODUCTION Two recent developments in agent technologies---both theoretical and practical---have made it possible to enhance high-level communication capability by incorporating conversation management and co...

Research paper thumbnail of Evolving Social Commitment Based Protocols Using MAPC

Currently, agent designers and programmers must work extensively to design, describe, test and im... more Currently, agent designers and programmers must work extensively to design, describe, test and implement the communication protocols used in multi agent systems. The design of the protocols is on an imperative basis. The potential exists for the designer and programmer to play a smaller role, though. This role would simply be to input a description of required activities, or to describe it declaratively. This paper describes MAPC (multi agent protocol creator) which makes it possible to evolve a protocol through the genetic programming of agent behaviours. These behaviours are capable of performing a communication-based task. Once the behaviours have been evolved, it is fairly simple to distil the behaviours into a social commitment based communication protocol. MAPC is currently able to evolve simple protocols, and is in active development in order to make it possible to evolve more complex protocols.

Research paper thumbnail of <title>Internet-enabled collaborative agent-based supply chains</title>

Network Intelligence: Internet-based Manufacturing, 2000

ABSTRACT This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems), the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled complex supply chain for a large manufacturing enterprise. The general collaborative agent system architecture with the basic communication and cooperation services, domain independent components, prototypes and mechanisms are described. Benefits of implementing Internet enabled supply chains with the proposed infrastructure are discussed. A case study on Internet enabled supply chain management is presented.

Research paper thumbnail of Groupware concept mapping techniques

Proceedings of the 12th annual international conference on Systems documentation technical communications at the great divide - SIGDOC '94, 1994

... groupware concept mapping tool designed to support the knowledge processes of geographically ... more ... groupware concept mapping tool designed to support the knowledge processes of geographically dispersed ccmurmnities. Introduction Concept maps are used to structureargument forms and express relationships between ideas [10]. ...

Research paper thumbnail of A collaborative agent-based infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative enterprises

The Internet has evolved very rapidly from an information space to a market space over the past f... more The Internet has evolved very rapidly from an information space to a market space over the past few years. There is a tendency towards implementing real-world agent-based applications based on the Internet. This paper presents some results of our recent research work towards an infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative agent systems. The infrastructure and the related supporting services, components, prototypes and

Research paper thumbnail of A Schema-Based Approach to Specifying Conversation Policies

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

... AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 375-418. 11. JAFMAS: A Java-based Agent Framework for Multiagent Systems ... more ... AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 375-418. 11. JAFMAS: A Java-based Agent Framework for Multiagent Systems Development and Implementation, Deepika Chauhan, ECECS Department, University of Cincinnati, USA, 1997, http://www. ececs. uc. edu/~ abaker/JAFMAS/ 12. ...

Research paper thumbnail of An Architecture for Modeling Internet-based Collaborative Agent Systems

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2001

This paper describes an architecture for modeling cooperating systems of communicating agents. Th... more This paper describes an architecture for modeling cooperating systems of communicating agents. The authors' goal is not that of providing a framework to implement multi-agents systems (there are tools-such as CORBA, Java and DCOM-that do an excellent job on that), but rather to provide an architectural metaphor upon which collaborative multi-agent systems could be modeled. The approach is based on requirements defined with a practical view of the communicational and resource-oriented nature of distributed collaborative multi-agent systems.

Research paper thumbnail of A Performative Type Hierarchy and Other Interesting Considerations in the Design of the CASA Agent Architecture

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

In this paper, we describe several interesting design decisions we have taken (with respect to in... more In this paper, we describe several interesting design decisions we have taken (with respect to inter-agent messaging) in the reengineered CASA architecture for agent communication and services. CASA is a new architecture designed from the ground up; it is influenced by the major agent architectures such as FIPA, CORBA, and KQML but is intended to be independent (which doesn't imply incompatible). The primary goals are flexibility, extendibility, simplicity, and ease of use. The lessons learned in the earlier implementation have fed the current design of the system. Among the most interesting of the design issues are the use of performatives that form a type lattice, which allows for observers, who do not necessarily understand all the performatives, to nonetheless understand a conversation at an appropriate semantic level. Furthermore, we found it difficult to arrange a portion of the FIPA performatives in a lattice without duplication and complexity. We solved this problem by diverging from FIPA performatives by separating a lot of the performatives into a separate lattice of acts, which work with the performatives, but greatly simplify and enhance the semantic interpretation of the messages. Yet another innovation is the addition of several new fields within a KQML-style message header that allow for further semantic interpretation of the message by an observer who does not necessarily understand the content language. The traditional FIPA fields to, from, sender, and receiver have been extended to include agent (the requester of a service), and actor (the party designated responsible for performing the action specified in the performative/act). These new design considerations add a great deal of flexibility and integrity to an agent communications architecture.

Research paper thumbnail of Visual and Textual Knowledge Representation in DESIRE

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1999

In this paper, graphical, conceptual graph-based representations for knowledge structures in the ... more In this paper, graphical, conceptual graph-based representations for knowledge structures in the compositional development method DESIRE for knowledge-based and multi-agent systems are presented, together with a graphical editor based on the Constraint Graph environment. Moreover, a translator is described which translates these graphical representations to textual representations in DESIRE. The strength of the combined environment is a powerful --yet easy-to-use -framework to support the development of knowledge based and multi-agent systems. Finally, a mapping is presented from DESIRE, that is based on order sorted predicate logic, to Conceptual Graphs. [SPACE] -(BETW) -[BRICK]

Research paper thumbnail of Enabling effective and emergent agent conversations

Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Autonomous agents - AGENTS '00, 2000

To enable effective and emergent conversations among software agents in open and distributed envi... more To enable effective and emergent conversations among software agents in open and distributed environment, this paper proposes a schema-based conversation modeling and manager-based conversation management approach. Conversation policies and interaction patterns among a group of agents are formulated and organized into class hierarchies of goal-directed conversation schemata, which are "sender-initialized" group interaction patterns and "receiver-responded" coordination constraints. Colored Petri Nets formalism is used for verifying conversation schemata. Using conversation schemata, conversation managers are constructed to mediate and administer conversations.

Research paper thumbnail of Using a performative subsumption lattice to support commitment-based conversations

Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - AAMAS '05, 2005

In this paper, we arrange FIPA's ACL performatives to form a subsumption lattice (ontology) and a... more In this paper, we arrange FIPA's ACL performatives to form a subsumption lattice (ontology) and apply a theory of social commitments to achieve a simplified and observable model of agent behaviour. Using this model, it is straight forward to model agents' social commitments (obligations) based solely on observation of messages passed between the agents (such observation is supported by our agent infrastructure system). Furthermore, owing to the performatives being in a subsumption lattice, it is relatively easy for an observer to infer social commitment relationships even if the observer does not understand the details of messages or even the exact performatives used (so long as the observer has access to the performatives ontology).