Andrea Omicini | Università di Bologna (original) (raw)

Papers by Andrea Omicini

This paper introduces argumentation over defeasible preferences in Arg2P, an argumentation framew... more This paper introduces argumentation over defeasible preferences in Arg2P, an argumentation framework based on logic programming. A computational mechanism is first implemented in Arg2P according to Dung’s defeasible preference model, then generalised to enable arbitrary preference relations over arguments.

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2019

In this paper we focus on the expressiveness of smart contracts (SC) and its role in blockchain t... more In this paper we focus on the expressiveness of smart contracts (SC) and its role in blockchain technologies (BCT), by presenting Tenderfone, a prototypical blockchain platform providing SC as pro-active, time-aware, and asynchronous entities.

Most of the emerging software-intensive systems nowadays are very large-scale ones, and inherentl... more Most of the emerging software-intensive systems nowadays are very large-scale ones, and inherently sociotechnical. In this position paper, we argue that the peculiar features of such emerging systems (up to millions of interacting components, lacking central control, mixing humans and artificial components) call for novel approaches to coordinate the overall activities and functionalities. Accordingly, we discuss the key challenges to be faced by research in coordination models and technologies, and try to sketch some promising research directions.

In spite of the growing influence of agent-based models and technologies, the event-based archite... more In spite of the growing influence of agent-based models and technologies, the event-based architectural style is still prevalent in the design of large-scale distributed applications. In this paper we discuss the role of environment in both EBS and MAS, and show how it could be used as a starting point for reconciling agent-based and event-based abstractions and techniques within a conceptually-coherent framework that could work as the foundation of a principled discipline for the engineering of complex software systems.

Features of blockchain technology (BCT) such as decentralisation, trust, fault tolerance, and acc... more Features of blockchain technology (BCT) such as decentralisation, trust, fault tolerance, and accountability, are of paramount importance for multi-agent systems (MAS). In this paper we argue that a principled approach to MAS-BCT integration cannot overlook the foundational character of agency—that is, autonomy. Accordingly, we present a custom BCT implementation where autonomy is placed in smart contracts (SC) interpreted as software agents. We show how agency can enhance SC expressiveness with autonomy, situatedness, sociality, and intelligence, and highlight the limitations of state-of-art BCT in supporting MAS design and implementation.

Once precisely defined so as to include just the explanation’s act, the notion of explanation sho... more Once precisely defined so as to include just the explanation’s act, the notion of explanation should be regarded as a central notion in the engineering of intelligent system—not just as an add-on to make them understandable to humans. Based on symbolic AI techniques to match intuitive and rational cognition, explanation should be exploited as a fundamental tool for inter-agent communication among heterogeneous agents in open multi-agent systems. More generally, explanation-ready agents should work as the basic components in the engineering of intelligent systems integrating both symbolic and sub-/non-symbolic AI techniques.

Welcome to the 19 th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004) hosted by the Universit... more Welcome to the 19 th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004) hosted by the University of Cyprus in Nicosia. On behalf of the organizing committee, thank you for participating in this international event dedicated to computer scientists, engineers, and practitioners seeking innovative ideas in various areas of computational applications.The Symposium is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP) whose mission is to further the interests of computing professionals engaged in the development of new computing applications, interdisciplinary applications areas, and applied research. SAC is devoted to the study of real-world problem applications using a variety of computational algorithms. It provides an avenue for discussion and exchange of new ideas, associated computational algorithms, and interesting complex applications. This goal is reflected in the spectrum of application areas and tutorials designed to provide a wide range of topics.Welcome to the 19th Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004). Over the past 18 years, SAC has been an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present their findings and research results in the areas of computer applications and technology. The SAC 2004 Technical Program offers a wide range of tracks covering major areas of computer applications. Highly qualified referees with strong expertise and special interest in their respective research areas carefully reviewed the submitted papers. As part of the Technical Program, this year the Tutorial Program offers 6 half-day tutorials that were carefully selected form numerous proposals.SAC's open call for Track Proposals resulted in the submission of 31 track proposals. These proposals were carefully evaluated by the conference Program Chairs. Some proposals were rejected on the grounds of either not being appropriate for the areas that SAC covers traditionally or being of rather narrow and specialized nature. Some others were merged to form a single track, on the grounds of having substantial overlap with each other. Eventually, 26 tracks were established, which then went on to produce their own call for papers. In response to these calls, 787 papers were submitted, from which 280 papers were strongly recommended by the referees for acceptance and inclusion in the Conference Proceedings. This gives SAC 2004 an acceptance rate of 36% across all tracks. Furthermore, it makes SAC 2004 the most successful conference in the history of SAC so far, but also one of the most popular and competitive conferences in the international field of applied computing.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Large-scale socio-technical systems (STS) inextricably interconnect individual-e.g., the right to... more Large-scale socio-technical systems (STS) inextricably interconnect individual-e.g., the right to privacy-, social-e.g., the effectiveness of organisational processes-, and technology issues-e.g., the software engineering process. As a result, the design of the complex software infrastructure involves also non-technological aspects such as the legal ones-so that, e.g., law-abidingness can be ensured since the early stages of the software engineering process. By focussing on contact centres (CC) as relevant examples of knowledgeintensive STS, we elaborate on the articulate aspects of anonymisation: there, individual and organisational needs clash, so that only an accurate balancing between legal and technical aspects could possibly ensure the system efficiency while preserving the individual right to privacy. We discuss first the overall legal framework, then the general theme of anonymisation in CC. Finally we overview the technical process developed in the context of the BISON project.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2001

Applied Artificial Intelligence

In the next decades, the emergence of complex intelligent systems is going to open a plethora of ... more In the next decades, the emergence of complex intelligent systems is going to open a plethora of new opportunities for logic programmers, capable of injecting Prolog programs within adaptive, pervasive, self-organising, knowledge-intensive systems, and integrating them with all the sorts of different programming languages and paradigms, over computing platforms of any kind. Suitable tools are then required, which could promote multi-language integration and multi-platform deployment, while ensuring both conceptual and technical coherence. The tuProlog logic programming framework is precisely heading in that direction.

Proceedings of the 2001 ACM symposium on Applied computing - SAC '01, 2001

The notion of coordination is more and more pervading many research fields both inside and outsid... more The notion of coordination is more and more pervading many research fields both inside and outside Computer Science. In particular, areas such as software engineering, intelligent systems, agent technologies, Internet applications, programming languages, parallel and distributed computing, all raise issues that concern the interaction among different kinds of entities–processes, objects, components, agents–as well as its management. Despite their apparent diversity, this wide and heterogeneous range of problems actually exhibit large ...

Proceedings of the 1999 ACM symposium on Applied computing - SAC '99, 1999

Abstract The emergence of coordination models and languages for the design and development of tod... more Abstract The emergence of coordination models and languages for the design and development of today multi-component software systems calls for a precise understanding and definition of what coordination is, what coordination models and languages are. and what they are meant to. In this paper, we aim at providing a conceptual framework for coordination, as well as an operational framework for the semantic characterisation of coordination models and languages. The main go+ of this framework are (i) to deal with ...

One of the fundamental factors driving the (self-)organisation of complex social systems — such a... more One of the fundamental factors driving the (self-)organisation of complex social systems — such as human organisations, animal societies, and multi-agent systems — is the interaction of individuals mediated by the environment: sharing a workspace, mutually perceiving each other's actions, and modifying a common environment are simple yet powerful mechanisms that enable social coordination. In this article, we recall and classify some of the main sorts of environment-based coordination, and discuss their impact on the engineering of complex socio-technical systems.

The aim of this work is to present a computational model based on logic programming where constra... more The aim of this work is to present a computational model based on logic programming where constrained computations can be performed over application domains described through an object-oriented data model. This model is essentially based on two kind of constraints: and . Provability constraints concern the truth value of a formula with respect to a given logic theory, which is bounded to satisfy the formula. Message passing is then re-interpreted in a declarative way as a relation constraining speci c object properties. Hierarchical constraints make it ...

adaptive agents and multi-agents systems, May 4, 2015

Based on two intuitions-(i) event-driven systems and multi-agent systems are two computational pa... more Based on two intuitions-(i) event-driven systems and multi-agent systems are two computational paradigms that are amenable of a coherent interpretation within a unique conceptual framework; (ii) integrating the two simulation approaches can lead to a more expressive and powerful simulation framework-we propose a computational model integrating Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) and Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS), based on an extension of the Gillespie's stochastic simulation algorithm.

Applied Sciences, 2021

The application of Artificial Intelligence to the industrial world and its appliances has recentl... more The application of Artificial Intelligence to the industrial world and its appliances has recently grown in popularity. Indeed, AI techniques are now becoming the de-facto technology for the resolution of complex tasks concerning computer vision, natural language processing and many other areas. In the last years, most of the the research community efforts have focused on increasing the performance of most common AI techniques—e.g., Neural Networks, etc.—at the expenses of their complexity. Indeed, many works in the AI field identify and propose hyper-efficient techniques, targeting high-end devices. However, the application of such AI techniques to devices and appliances which are characterised by limited computational capabilities, remains an open research issue. In the industrial world, this problem heavily targets low-end appliances, which are developed focusing on saving costs and relying on—computationally—constrained components. While some efforts have been made in this area ...

One of the most stimulating research lines in software engineering today, process engineering is ... more One of the most stimulating research lines in software engineering today, process engineering is currently a hot topic in agentoriented software engineering research [1–4]. A number of methodologies have been designed such as ADELFE, ASPECS, INGENIAS, MaSE, PASSI, Prometheus, SODA, Tropos,. . . , each of which with their own specificities. Sometimes, when a multi-agent application has to be designed, the methodology chosen does not completely fit for the whole development process. The current proposed approach is to take benefits to all existing methodologies and to reuse during the development process those parts that are the most relevant in order to build a new process engineering. There, process engineering aims at building libraries of suitable methods from/for agent oriented methodologies, thus helping in cataloguing current processes, assessing their utility, and rebuilding them according to developer needs. In this paper, we first provide a general view over the area of Soft...

Expert Systems, 2018

We introduce Spatial Tuples, an extension of the basic tuple‐based model for distributed multi‐ag... more We introduce Spatial Tuples, an extension of the basic tuple‐based model for distributed multi‐agent system coordination where (a) tuples are conceptually placed in regions of the physical world and possibly move anchored to a mobile computational device, (b) the behaviour of standard Linda coordination primitives is extended so as to depend on the spatial properties of the coordinating agents, tuples, and the topology of space, and (c) the tuple space can be conceived as a virtual layer augmenting physical reality. Motivated by the needs of mobile augmented‐reality applications, Spatial Tuples explicitly aims at supporting space‐aware and space‐based coordination in agent‐based pervasive computing scenarios. This paper presents the coordination model, its formalization as a process algebra, a library of patterns of coordination it enables, and a discussion of application scenarios, challenges, and open issues for future works.

This paper introduces argumentation over defeasible preferences in Arg2P, an argumentation framew... more This paper introduces argumentation over defeasible preferences in Arg2P, an argumentation framework based on logic programming. A computational mechanism is first implemented in Arg2P according to Dung’s defeasible preference model, then generalised to enable arbitrary preference relations over arguments.

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2019

In this paper we focus on the expressiveness of smart contracts (SC) and its role in blockchain t... more In this paper we focus on the expressiveness of smart contracts (SC) and its role in blockchain technologies (BCT), by presenting Tenderfone, a prototypical blockchain platform providing SC as pro-active, time-aware, and asynchronous entities.

Most of the emerging software-intensive systems nowadays are very large-scale ones, and inherentl... more Most of the emerging software-intensive systems nowadays are very large-scale ones, and inherently sociotechnical. In this position paper, we argue that the peculiar features of such emerging systems (up to millions of interacting components, lacking central control, mixing humans and artificial components) call for novel approaches to coordinate the overall activities and functionalities. Accordingly, we discuss the key challenges to be faced by research in coordination models and technologies, and try to sketch some promising research directions.

In spite of the growing influence of agent-based models and technologies, the event-based archite... more In spite of the growing influence of agent-based models and technologies, the event-based architectural style is still prevalent in the design of large-scale distributed applications. In this paper we discuss the role of environment in both EBS and MAS, and show how it could be used as a starting point for reconciling agent-based and event-based abstractions and techniques within a conceptually-coherent framework that could work as the foundation of a principled discipline for the engineering of complex software systems.

Features of blockchain technology (BCT) such as decentralisation, trust, fault tolerance, and acc... more Features of blockchain technology (BCT) such as decentralisation, trust, fault tolerance, and accountability, are of paramount importance for multi-agent systems (MAS). In this paper we argue that a principled approach to MAS-BCT integration cannot overlook the foundational character of agency—that is, autonomy. Accordingly, we present a custom BCT implementation where autonomy is placed in smart contracts (SC) interpreted as software agents. We show how agency can enhance SC expressiveness with autonomy, situatedness, sociality, and intelligence, and highlight the limitations of state-of-art BCT in supporting MAS design and implementation.

Once precisely defined so as to include just the explanation’s act, the notion of explanation sho... more Once precisely defined so as to include just the explanation’s act, the notion of explanation should be regarded as a central notion in the engineering of intelligent system—not just as an add-on to make them understandable to humans. Based on symbolic AI techniques to match intuitive and rational cognition, explanation should be exploited as a fundamental tool for inter-agent communication among heterogeneous agents in open multi-agent systems. More generally, explanation-ready agents should work as the basic components in the engineering of intelligent systems integrating both symbolic and sub-/non-symbolic AI techniques.

Welcome to the 19 th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004) hosted by the Universit... more Welcome to the 19 th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004) hosted by the University of Cyprus in Nicosia. On behalf of the organizing committee, thank you for participating in this international event dedicated to computer scientists, engineers, and practitioners seeking innovative ideas in various areas of computational applications.The Symposium is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP) whose mission is to further the interests of computing professionals engaged in the development of new computing applications, interdisciplinary applications areas, and applied research. SAC is devoted to the study of real-world problem applications using a variety of computational algorithms. It provides an avenue for discussion and exchange of new ideas, associated computational algorithms, and interesting complex applications. This goal is reflected in the spectrum of application areas and tutorials designed to provide a wide range of topics.Welcome to the 19th Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2004). Over the past 18 years, SAC has been an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present their findings and research results in the areas of computer applications and technology. The SAC 2004 Technical Program offers a wide range of tracks covering major areas of computer applications. Highly qualified referees with strong expertise and special interest in their respective research areas carefully reviewed the submitted papers. As part of the Technical Program, this year the Tutorial Program offers 6 half-day tutorials that were carefully selected form numerous proposals.SAC's open call for Track Proposals resulted in the submission of 31 track proposals. These proposals were carefully evaluated by the conference Program Chairs. Some proposals were rejected on the grounds of either not being appropriate for the areas that SAC covers traditionally or being of rather narrow and specialized nature. Some others were merged to form a single track, on the grounds of having substantial overlap with each other. Eventually, 26 tracks were established, which then went on to produce their own call for papers. In response to these calls, 787 papers were submitted, from which 280 papers were strongly recommended by the referees for acceptance and inclusion in the Conference Proceedings. This gives SAC 2004 an acceptance rate of 36% across all tracks. Furthermore, it makes SAC 2004 the most successful conference in the history of SAC so far, but also one of the most popular and competitive conferences in the international field of applied computing.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Large-scale socio-technical systems (STS) inextricably interconnect individual-e.g., the right to... more Large-scale socio-technical systems (STS) inextricably interconnect individual-e.g., the right to privacy-, social-e.g., the effectiveness of organisational processes-, and technology issues-e.g., the software engineering process. As a result, the design of the complex software infrastructure involves also non-technological aspects such as the legal ones-so that, e.g., law-abidingness can be ensured since the early stages of the software engineering process. By focussing on contact centres (CC) as relevant examples of knowledgeintensive STS, we elaborate on the articulate aspects of anonymisation: there, individual and organisational needs clash, so that only an accurate balancing between legal and technical aspects could possibly ensure the system efficiency while preserving the individual right to privacy. We discuss first the overall legal framework, then the general theme of anonymisation in CC. Finally we overview the technical process developed in the context of the BISON project.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2001

Applied Artificial Intelligence

In the next decades, the emergence of complex intelligent systems is going to open a plethora of ... more In the next decades, the emergence of complex intelligent systems is going to open a plethora of new opportunities for logic programmers, capable of injecting Prolog programs within adaptive, pervasive, self-organising, knowledge-intensive systems, and integrating them with all the sorts of different programming languages and paradigms, over computing platforms of any kind. Suitable tools are then required, which could promote multi-language integration and multi-platform deployment, while ensuring both conceptual and technical coherence. The tuProlog logic programming framework is precisely heading in that direction.

Proceedings of the 2001 ACM symposium on Applied computing - SAC '01, 2001

The notion of coordination is more and more pervading many research fields both inside and outsid... more The notion of coordination is more and more pervading many research fields both inside and outside Computer Science. In particular, areas such as software engineering, intelligent systems, agent technologies, Internet applications, programming languages, parallel and distributed computing, all raise issues that concern the interaction among different kinds of entities–processes, objects, components, agents–as well as its management. Despite their apparent diversity, this wide and heterogeneous range of problems actually exhibit large ...

Proceedings of the 1999 ACM symposium on Applied computing - SAC '99, 1999

Abstract The emergence of coordination models and languages for the design and development of tod... more Abstract The emergence of coordination models and languages for the design and development of today multi-component software systems calls for a precise understanding and definition of what coordination is, what coordination models and languages are. and what they are meant to. In this paper, we aim at providing a conceptual framework for coordination, as well as an operational framework for the semantic characterisation of coordination models and languages. The main go+ of this framework are (i) to deal with ...

One of the fundamental factors driving the (self-)organisation of complex social systems — such a... more One of the fundamental factors driving the (self-)organisation of complex social systems — such as human organisations, animal societies, and multi-agent systems — is the interaction of individuals mediated by the environment: sharing a workspace, mutually perceiving each other's actions, and modifying a common environment are simple yet powerful mechanisms that enable social coordination. In this article, we recall and classify some of the main sorts of environment-based coordination, and discuss their impact on the engineering of complex socio-technical systems.

The aim of this work is to present a computational model based on logic programming where constra... more The aim of this work is to present a computational model based on logic programming where constrained computations can be performed over application domains described through an object-oriented data model. This model is essentially based on two kind of constraints: and . Provability constraints concern the truth value of a formula with respect to a given logic theory, which is bounded to satisfy the formula. Message passing is then re-interpreted in a declarative way as a relation constraining speci c object properties. Hierarchical constraints make it ...

adaptive agents and multi-agents systems, May 4, 2015

Based on two intuitions-(i) event-driven systems and multi-agent systems are two computational pa... more Based on two intuitions-(i) event-driven systems and multi-agent systems are two computational paradigms that are amenable of a coherent interpretation within a unique conceptual framework; (ii) integrating the two simulation approaches can lead to a more expressive and powerful simulation framework-we propose a computational model integrating Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) and Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS), based on an extension of the Gillespie's stochastic simulation algorithm.

Applied Sciences, 2021

The application of Artificial Intelligence to the industrial world and its appliances has recentl... more The application of Artificial Intelligence to the industrial world and its appliances has recently grown in popularity. Indeed, AI techniques are now becoming the de-facto technology for the resolution of complex tasks concerning computer vision, natural language processing and many other areas. In the last years, most of the the research community efforts have focused on increasing the performance of most common AI techniques—e.g., Neural Networks, etc.—at the expenses of their complexity. Indeed, many works in the AI field identify and propose hyper-efficient techniques, targeting high-end devices. However, the application of such AI techniques to devices and appliances which are characterised by limited computational capabilities, remains an open research issue. In the industrial world, this problem heavily targets low-end appliances, which are developed focusing on saving costs and relying on—computationally—constrained components. While some efforts have been made in this area ...

One of the most stimulating research lines in software engineering today, process engineering is ... more One of the most stimulating research lines in software engineering today, process engineering is currently a hot topic in agentoriented software engineering research [1–4]. A number of methodologies have been designed such as ADELFE, ASPECS, INGENIAS, MaSE, PASSI, Prometheus, SODA, Tropos,. . . , each of which with their own specificities. Sometimes, when a multi-agent application has to be designed, the methodology chosen does not completely fit for the whole development process. The current proposed approach is to take benefits to all existing methodologies and to reuse during the development process those parts that are the most relevant in order to build a new process engineering. There, process engineering aims at building libraries of suitable methods from/for agent oriented methodologies, thus helping in cataloguing current processes, assessing their utility, and rebuilding them according to developer needs. In this paper, we first provide a general view over the area of Soft...

Expert Systems, 2018

We introduce Spatial Tuples, an extension of the basic tuple‐based model for distributed multi‐ag... more We introduce Spatial Tuples, an extension of the basic tuple‐based model for distributed multi‐agent system coordination where (a) tuples are conceptually placed in regions of the physical world and possibly move anchored to a mobile computational device, (b) the behaviour of standard Linda coordination primitives is extended so as to depend on the spatial properties of the coordinating agents, tuples, and the topology of space, and (c) the tuple space can be conceived as a virtual layer augmenting physical reality. Motivated by the needs of mobile augmented‐reality applications, Spatial Tuples explicitly aims at supporting space‐aware and space‐based coordination in agent‐based pervasive computing scenarios. This paper presents the coordination model, its formalization as a process algebra, a library of patterns of coordination it enables, and a discussion of application scenarios, challenges, and open issues for future works.

Research on agents, intelligent agents, and multiagent systems (MAS) has been one of the most liv... more Research on agents, intelligent agents, and multiagent systems (MAS) has been one of the most lively areas in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field in the last years. Moving from basic theoretical and technological issues, MAS research has gone beyond the limits of classical (distributed) AI, spreading to apparently distant fields like software engineering, pervasive computing, self-organisation, simulation—essentially dealing with complexity of artificial systems, according to most of the legitimate acceptations of the term. In this paper, we devise out the main development lines of MAS research, and put them in historical perspective by focussing on the last decades of research in Italy.