Congregating Agents

在基于Agent的系统中，Agent可以以不同的组合进行团队合作来解决问题。然而，团队合作需要代理人相互理解并承诺采取一致行动。在开放的、不断发展的网络系统中，普遍的理解和承诺是不可能的;相反，代理人应该与那些他们可以理解的代理人聚集在一起，并且他们在过去已经成功地与他们合作过。 Agent集合由对公共语义和本体（世界的概念化）的承诺定义。聚集提高了沟通的效率和成功组队的可能性。 然而，它可能会阻碍有效的团队成员跨教会的形成，因为代理需要学习新的本体，并在寻找满足其偏好的新教会时产生开销。 这个项目调查了代理教会是如何形成的，以及如何以及何时应该进行改革。该研究包括模拟大型社区的代理，正式的代理模型和原型系统。其结果将有助于指导国家计算和通信基础设施的发展，支持科学，教育和商业社区不断发展的身份和利益，并鼓励不同社区之间的沟通。http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/wpb/conagents/

In agent-based systems, agents can team in different combinations to cooperatively solve problems. Teaming, however, requires that agents understand each other and commit to concerted actions. In open, evolving networked systems, universal understanding and commitment are unlikely; instead, agents should congregate with those agents that they can understand and with whom they have successfully teamed in the past. Agent congregations are defined by commitments to common semantics and ontologies (conceptualizations of the world). Congregating improves the efficiency of communication and the likelihood of successful teaming. It can, however, impede the formation of effective teams whose members cross congregations, because agents need to learn new ontologies and incur overhead in searching for new congregations that meet their preferences. This project investigates how agent congregations are formed and how and when they should be reformed. The research includes simulations of large communities of agents, formal models of agency, and prototype systems. Its results will help guide the development of a national computing and communication infrastructure that supports the evolving identities and interests of scientific, educational, and commercial communities, and encourages communication between different communities. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/wpb/conagents/