KAW'96 Track
Agent-oriented Approaches
to Knowledge Engineering
Track chairs
- Frances Brazier
- frances@cs.vu.nl
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Jan Treur
- treur@cs.vu.nl
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Description
Recent technological developments have considerably increased the amount
of information exchanged between systems across the world. New
developments at the level of hardware (parallel systems, fibre, protocols, the
digital information superhighway), distributed operating systems and
distributed databases have provided the means for industry to develop
distributed, multi-agent industrial applications.
As multi-agent technology begins to emerge as a viable solution for large-
scale industrial and commercial applications, there is an increasing need to
ensure that the systems developed are robust, reliable and fit for
purpose. To this end, it is important that the basic principles and lessons of
software and knowledge engineering are applied to the development and
deployment of multi-agent systems. At present, the majority of existing
agent applications are developed in an ad hoc fashion - following little or no
rigorous design methodology and with limited a priori specification of the
agents or of the system as a whole. This lack of principled development
methods is one of the major factors hampering the wide-scale adoption of
agent technology.
To develop methods with which such systems can be modelled and
specified at a conceptually acceptable level of detail, (free from
implementation details) characteristics of real-world multi-agent
applications need to be identified, in relation to specific domains. The
requirements these characteristics impose on a knowledge engineering
methods, techniques and tools developers require to model multi-agent
systems will need to be determined.
A number of unique generic characteristics have already been identified for
multi-agent systems. Agents must, for example, maintain interaction with their
environment (observing in the world and performing actions in response;
reactiveness), be able to take the initiative (pro-activeness), be able to
perform social actions (communication, cooperation), and be able to
generate goals independently and act and rationally to achieve them
(planning and plan execution; autonomy). Agents models often need to
incorporate: reasoning and acting in a defeasible manner, representation of
other agents, and reflective reasoning. Also mentalistic notions describing
informational and motivational attitudes such as beliefs, desires, intentions
and commitments can be incorparated in agent models.
In specific domains of application, such
as project coordination, cooperative design, navigation, information
retrieval, et cetera, more specific characteristics can be identified.
In many areas of software engineering and knowledge-based system design,
modelling frameworks have been developed in which specifications of the
conceptual design of complex systems are expressed
before systems are implemented.
Such specifications describe the semantics
of systems without concern for implementation details, providing a basis for
verification and validation of the functionality of the systems. Modelling
frameworks, require adequate means to describe the characteristics of
multi-agent systems, in particular, the control of the dynamics
of reasoning behaviour and acting behaviour (e.g., guided reasoning,
observation, communication and execution of actions).
Models of agents may also describe the more
specific characteristics of agents in specific domains of application, as
mentioned above.
In this workshop the challenge with which the knowledge acquistion
community is faced, namely to design modelling frameworks within
which agents, and interaction between agents, can be adequately
modelled, will be addressed. Papers should address one or more
of the aspects mentioned above.
Submission
Draft papers (up to 20 pages) should be sent electronically to Brian Gaines
before May 31, 1996. Acceptance and revision notices will be e-mailed by July
31, 1996. Revised papers (20 pages) should be submitted by September 30, 1996,
so that hardcopies may be bound together for distribution at the workshop.
Authors who submit papers to the workshop will be expected to help with the
refereeing of papers submitted by other individuals.
Submission and review of papers, and coordination of all aspects of the
meeting, will be through the Internet. Papers should be transmitted in
postscript or common document processor format (e.g., Microsoft Word) either
by e-mail to gaines@cpsc.ucalgary.ca, or by FTP to ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca in
directory /incoming (with an email note to gaines@cpsc.ucalgary.ca when the
paper is transferred).
The world-wide web (WWW) will be used to coordinate the meeting and to provide
further details of the tracks, paper formats, conference arrangements, and so
on. Please see the following URL for more information about the KAW workshop:
http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/KAW/KAW.html