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Publications (211)
This article addresses the problem of finding suitable agents to collaborate with for a given interaction in distributed open systems, such as multiagent and P2P systems. The agent in question is given the chance to describe its confidence in its own capabilities. However, since agents may be malicious, misinformed, suffer from miscommunication, an...
A joint university / industry collaboration is investigating the deployment of MAS technology to manage wireless communications networks. These systems are very large and are situated in a chaotic environment which suggests the use of distributed intelligent control that aims to continually improve, whilst not expecting to optimise, network perform...
Due to widespread use and limited radio spectrum of 802.11 based networks, interference between collocated networks is an important problem. In this paper we expand our prior work on the multiagent system for channel assignment based topology control on multi-radio wireless mesh networks. The aim of the system is to dynamically reduce the overall i...
Negotiation between two trading agents is as much an information exchange process as it is an offer exchange process. To avoid the problems of natural language understanding, this information is represented in predicate logic and organised into lattice structures. The negotiation process aims to reach informed decisions in eMarket bargaining by int...
Many of the issues in managing complex business processes are shared by the management of industry, manufacturing processes. Both operate in open, dynamic environments, and both have to cope with continually changing performance. Two issues are the choice of the basic software architecture to manage the processes and the adaptivity mechanism that e...
The degree of trust that an agent has for another is the strength of the agent's belief that the other will enact its commitments without variation. A strong sense of trust may be sufficient justification for one agent to sign a contract with another when all that matters is the possibility of variation between commitment and enactment. In non-triv...
This paper is concerned with rhetorical argumentation that aims to alter the beliefs of the listener, and so to influence his future actions, as opposed to classical argumentation that is concerned with the generation of arguments, usually as logical proofs, for and against a given course of action. Rhetorical ar-gumentation includes rhetoric moves...
The self-organisation of telecommunications networks has to confront the two challenges of the scalability and the stability
of the solution. This paper describes a distributed, co-operative multiagent system in which agents make decisions based only
on local knowledge — that guarantees scalability. Extensive simulations indicate that stability is...
In a unified conceptual model for first-order knowledge bases the data and knowledge are modelled formally in a uniform way.
A knowledge base is maintained by modifying its conceptual model and by using those modifications to specify changes to its
implementation. The maintenance problem is to determine which parts of that model should be checked f...
Relationships are fundamental to all but the most impersonal forms of interaction in business. Human agents who are unsure
of themselves seek honourable trading relationships. The establishment and growth of interpersonal relationships is a result
of reciprocal exchange of information. This paper addresses the problem of use of information for deve...
A major project is investigating methods for conserving power in wireless networks. A component of this project addresses
methods for predicting whether the user demand load in each zone of a network is increasing, decreasing or approximately constant.
These predictions are then fed into the power regulation system. This paper describes a real-time...
The prediction of load in communications networks provides a scientific basis for conserving power that is currently attracting considerable interest. This paper reports the results of experiments to predict communications network load using real network data. The problem considered is simply to predict whether load is “generally” increasing, decre...
An agent architecture supports the two forms of deliberation used by human agents. Cartesian, constructivist rationalism leads
to game theory, decision theory and logical models. Ecological rationalism leads to deliberative actions that are derived
from agents’ prior interactions and are not designed; i.e., they are strictly emergent. This paper ai...
A model of reputation is presented in which agents share and aggregate their opinions, and observe the way in which their opinions effect the opinions of others. A method is proposed that supports the deliberative process of combining opinions into a group's reputation. The reliability of agents as opinion givers are measured in terms of the extent...
This paper proposes that electronic marketplaces for Web 3.0 can be described through three metaphors: "marketplaces where people are", "marketplaces that are alive and engaging", and "market places where information is valuable and useful". The paper presents the core technologies that enable the perceivable reality of electronic marketplaces. It...
The concept of dual rationality in human agents is well understood. It is significant in the work of the economist and Nobel
Laureate Friedrich Hayek. In psychology Sigmund Freud described ‘dual information processing’. More recently in cognitive
science Daniel Levine has extensively studied the dual mechanisms in the human brain that handle these...
Relationships are fundamental to all but the most impersonal forms of interaction in business. An agent aims to secure projected needs by attempting to build a set of (business) relationships with other agents. A relationship is built by exchanging private information, and is characterised by its intimacy — degree of closeness — and balance — degre...
An electronic market system is predicated on three technologies: data mining, intelligent trading agents and virtual institutions
in which informed trading agents can trade securely both with each other and with human agents in a natural way. This paper
describes a demonstrable prototype electronic market that integrates these three technologies an...
Intelligent network management models monitor personal health parameters rather than computer network modalities. We describe
a multi-agent system for managing safety critical processes to work in conjunction with the remote monitoring capabilities
of the systems.
In argumentation-based negotiation the rhetorical illocutionary particles Appeals, Rewards and Threats have implications for the players that extend beyond a single negotiation and are concerned with building (business) relationships. This paper extends an agent's relationship-building argumentative repertoire with Opinions and Advice. A framework...
The self-organisation of telecommunications networks has to confront the two challenges of the scalability and the stability
of the solution. This paper describes a distributed, co-operative multiagent system in which agents make decisions based only
on local knowledge — that guarantees scalability. Extensive simulations indicate that stability is...
An approach to argumentation attempts to model the partner's evaluative criteria, and by attempting to work with it rather
than against it. To this end, the utterances generated aim to influence the partner to believe what we believe to be in his
best interests— although it may not be in fact. The utterances aim to convey what is so, and not to poi...
Human agents deliberate using models based on reason for only a minute proportion of the decisions that they make. In stark contrast, the deliberation of artificial agents is heavily dominated by formal models based on reason such as game theory, decision theory and logic---despite that fact that formal reasoning will not necessarily lead to superi...
An agent architecture supports the two forms of deliberation used by human agents. The work is founded on the two forms of rationality described by the two Nobel Laureates Friedrich Hayek and Vernon Smith. Cartesian, constructivist rationalism leads to game theory, decision theory and logical models. Ecological rationalism leads to deliberative act...
Contemporary Web-based electronic markets reflect the dominating content-based systems approach of Web 2.0. Though useful, these electronic markets are far from being believable trading places. Marketplace is where things and traders have presence, constituting a rich interaction space. The believability of the place depends on the believability of...
An agent aims to secure his projected needs by attempting to build a set of (business) relationships with other agents. A
relationship is built by exchanging private information, and is characterised by its intimacy — degree of closeness — and
balance — degree of fairness. Each argumentative interaction between two agents then has two goals: to sat...
Information-based agents use tools from information theory to evalu-ate their utterances and to build their world model. When embedded in a social network these agents measure the strength of information flow in this sense. This leads to a model of information-based reputation in which agents share opin-ions, and observe the way in which their opin...
Successful negotiators look beyond a purely utilitarian view. We propose a new agent architecture that was inspired by the observation that "Everything that an agent says gives away (valuable) information.'' It is intended for agents who are uncertain about their environment. Information-based agency uses tools from information theory, and includes...
Believability of computerised agents is a growing area of research. This paper is focused on one aspect of believability - believable movements of avatars in normative 3D Virtual Worlds called Virtual Institutions. It presents a method for implicit training of autonomous agents in order to â?believablyâ? represent humans in Virtual Institutions. Th...
A light-weight multi-agent system is employed in a â??self-organisation of multi-radio mesh networksâ? project to manage 802.11 mesh networks. As 802.11 mesh networks can be extremely large the two main challenges are the scalability and stability of the solution. The basic approach is that of a distributed, light-weight, co-operative multiagent sy...
The foundations of information-based agency are described, and the principal architectural components are introduced. The agentâ??s deliberative planning mechanism manages interaction using plans and strategies in the context of the relationships the agent has with other agents, and is the means by which those relationships develop. Finally strateg...
A pair of ‘trust maps’ give a fine-grained view of an agent’s accumulated, time-discounted belief that the enactment of commitments
by another agent will be in-line with what was promised, and that the observed agent will act in a way that respects the confidentiality
of previously passed information. The structure of these maps is defined in terms...
To address the problem of topology control on multi-radio wireless mesh networks a distributed, lightweight, co-operative
multiagent system that guarantees scalability has been developed and validated by simulation. Our goal is twofold, to select
channels so to reduce interference, and improve connectivity by shortening paths between portal and cli...
A lightweight multiagent system is deployed at each node in a communications network with the aim of self-organising the network
as usage alters. The distributed, light-weight, co-operative multiagent system guarantees scalability of the approach. As
the solution is distributed it is unsuitable to achieve any global optimisation goal — it simply se...
Demands on communications networks to support bundled, interdependent communications services (data, voice, video) are increasing in complexity. Smart network management techniques are required to meet this demand. Such management techniques are envisioned to be based on two main technologies: (i) embedded intelligence; and (ii) up-to-the-milliseco...
The automation of contract negotiation requires intelligent agents that can assimilate and use real-time information flows wisely. Electronic markets are information-rich with access to the Internet and the World Wide Web. A new breed of "information-based" agents are founded on concepts from information theory, and are designed to operate with inf...
The Semantic Web makes unique demands on agency. Such agents should: be built around an ontology and should take advantage of the relations in it, be based on a grounded approach to uncertainty, be able to deal naturally with the issue of semantic alignment, and deal with interaction in a way that is suited to the co-ordination of services. A new b...
The semantic web makes unique demands on agency. Such agents should: be built around an ontology and should take advantage
of the relations in it, be based on a grounded approach to uncertainty, be able to deal naturally with the issue of semantic
alignment, and deal with interaction in a way that is suited to the co-ordination of services. A new b...
Two algorithms in a "self-organisation of multi-radio mesh networks" project are described and validated by simulation. As they are to be deployed over large networks the two chal- lenges have been the scalability and stability of the solution. The basic approach is that of a distributed, light-weight, co- operative multiagent system that guarantee...
Information-based argumentation aims to model the partner’s reasoning apparatus to the extent that an agent can work with
it to achieve outcomes that are mutually satisfactory and lay the foundation for continued interaction and perhaps lasting
business relationships. Information-based agents take observations at face value, qualify them with a bel...
Information-based agency is founded on two observations: everything in an agent's world model is uncertain, and ev- erything that an agent communicates gives away valuable information. The agent's deliberative mechanism manages interaction using plans and strategies in the context of the relationships the agent has with other agents, and is the mea...
An algorithm for self-organisation that assigns the channels intelligently in Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks (MR-WMN) is important for the proper operation of MR-WMN. The aim of the self-organisation algorithm is to reduce the overall interference and increase the aggregate capacity of the network. In this paper, we have first proposed a generi...
Consumer reviews, opinions and shared experiences in the use of a product form a powerful source of information about consumer preferences that can be used for making recommendations. A novel approach, which utilises this valuable information sources first time to create recommendations in recommender agents was recently developed by Aciar et al. (...
Fully automated trading, such as e-procurement, is virtually unheard of today. Trading involves the maintenance of effective
business relationships, and is the complete process of: need identification, product brokering, supplier brokering, offer-exchange,
contract negotiation, and contract execution. Three core technologies are needed to fully aut...
Multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MR-WMN) can substantially increase the aggregate capacity of the wireless mesh networks (WMN) if the channels are assigned to the nodes in an intelligent way so that the overall interference is limited. We propose a generic self-organisation algorithm that addresses the two key challenges of scalability and stabi...
An algorithm for self-organization that assigns the channels intelligently in multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MR-WMN) is important for the proper operation of MR-WMN. The aim of the self-organization algorithm is to reduce the overall interference and increase the aggregate capacity of the network. This can be possible by addressing the two maj...
We propose that the key to building informed negotiating agents is to develop a form of agency that integrates naturally with data mining and information sources. These agents take their historic observations as primitive, model their changing uncertainty in that information, and use that model as the foundation for the agents reasoning. We describ...
Knowledge ‘objects’ are constructors for building chunks of knowledge that enable the hidden links in the knowledge to be
identified. A single operation for objects enables these hidden links to be removed from the knowledge thus simplifying maintenance.
Analysis of the maintenance links shows that they are of four different types. The density of t...
First, a hierarchical modelling method, VQSVM, is introduced, and some remarks are discussed. Secondly the proposed VQSVM is applied to a nonstandard learning environment, imbalanced data sets. In cases of extremely imbalanced dataset with high dimensions, standard machine learning techniques tend to be overwhelmed by the large classes. The hierarc...
Recommender systems attempt to predict items in which a user might be interested, given some information about the user's and items' profiles. Most existing recommender systems use content-based or collaborative filtering methods or hybrid methods that combine both techniques (see the sidebar for more details). We created Informed Recommender to ad...
We propose that the key to building intelligent negotiating agents is to take an agent’s historic observations as primitive,
to model that agent’s changing uncertainty in that information, and to use that model as the foundation for the agent’s reasoning.
We describe an agent architecture, with an attendant theory, that is based on that model. In t...
The Curious Negotiator project aims at the automation (to the extent possible) of the delivery and use of information by negotiation agents in electronic market environment. This chapter presents a framework for using text mining agents to provide processed online information to negotiation agents. It includes a news extraction algorithm, a quantit...
Successful negotiators look beyond a purely util- itarian view. We propose a new agent architec- ture that integrates the utilitarian, information, and semantic views allowing the definition of strate- gies that take these three dimensions into account. Information-based agency values the information in dialogues in the context of a communication l...
Successful negotiators prepare by determining their position along five dimensions. We introduce a negotiation model based
on these dimensions and on two primitive concepts: intimacy (degree of closeness) and balance (degree of fairness). The intimacy is a pair of matrices that evaluate both an agent’s contribution to the relationship and its oppon...
Successful negotiators prepare by determining their position along five dimensions: Legitimacy, Options, Goals, Indepen- dence, and Commitment, (LOGIC). We introduce a negoti- ation model based on these dimensions and on two primitive concepts: intimacy (degree of closeness) and balance (degree of fairness). The intimacy is a pair of matrices that...
A new breed of "information-based" agents aims to deliver effective negotiators to Internet commerce. They are founded on concepts from information theory, and are designed to operate with information flows of varying and questionable integrity. These agents are part of a larger project that aims to make informed automated trading in applications s...
The predominant approaches to automating competitive interaction appeal to the central notion of a utility function that represents
an agent’s preferences. Agent’s are then endowed with machinery that enables them to perform actions that are intended to
optimise their expected utility. Despite the extent of this work, the deployment of automatic ne...
The paper reviews the recent developments of incorporating prior domain knowledge into inductive machine learning, and proposes a guideline that incorporates prior domain knowledge in three key issues of inductive machine learning algorithms: consistency, gen-eralization and convergence. With respect to each issue, this paper gives some approaches...
Multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MR-WMN) with a smart channel assignment scheme can be used as a viable cost-effective alternative for a last mile broadband access. The channel assignment algorithm should be such that it reduces the overall interference and increases the aggregate capacity of the network. In this paper, we have concisely present...
We propose that the key to building intelligent negotiating agents is to take an agent’s historic observations as primitive,
to model that agent’s changing uncertainty in that information, and to use that model as the foundation for the agent’s reasoning.
We describe an agent architecture, with an attendant theory, that is based on that model. In t...
Consumer reviews, opinions and shared experiences in the use of a product form a powerful source of information about consumer preferences that can be used for making recommendations. A novel framework, which utilizes this valuable information sources first time to create recommendations in recommender agents was recently developed by the authors [...
Consumer reviews, opinions and shared experiences in the use of a product is a powerful source of information about consumer preferences that can be used in recommender systems. Despite the importance and value of such information, there is no comprehensive mechanism that formalizes the opinions selection and retrieval process and the utilization o...
Theoretical proposals for the development of reusable method fragments are applied to the identification of method fragments
in the agent-oriented methodology, PASSI. The format of these fragments is ensured as compatible with the structure and format
already established for the OPEN Process Framework’s (OPF) repository, which uses a method enginee...
Emergent processes are non-routine business processes whose execution is guided by the knowledge that emerges during a process
instance. Managing emergent processes needs an intelligent agent that is guided not by a process goal, but by a continual
in-flow of information, where the integrity of each chunk of information may be uncertain.
The process management spectrum extends from conventional workflow processes to emergent processes. Three categories of process are identified. Activity-driven processes that are managed by a single reactive agent architecture. Goal-driven processes that are managed by a multiagent system of deliberative agents. Knowledge-driven processes that are...
Electronic markets with access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, are information-rich and require agents that can assimilate
and use real-time information flows wisely. A new breed of “information-based” agents aims to meet this requirement. They
are founded on concepts from information theory, and are designed to operate with information flo...
Chat rooms and newsgroup on the internet is a valuable, and often free of charge, source of information. In this paper, a design of smart chat room bots that automatically retrieve and filter on line messages is proposed. The design is based on internet technology and Bayesian Networks. Technical details of connecting to and retrieving data from we...
Information-rich environments, such as electronic markets, or even more generally the World Wide Web, require agents that
can assimilate and use real-time information flows wisely. A new breed of “information-based” agents aim to meet this requirement.
They are founded on concepts from information theory, and are designed to operate with informatio...
Three core technologies are needed to fully automate the trading process: data mining, intelligent trading agents and virtual
institutions in which informed trading agents can trade securely both with each other and with human agents in a natural way.
This paper describes a demonstrable prototype e-trading system that integrates these three technol...
Associating the pattern in text data with the pattern with time series data is a novel task. In this paper, an approach that utilizes the features of the time series data and domain knowledge is proposed and used to identify the patterns for exchange rate modeling. A set of rules to identify the patterns are firstly specified using domain knowledge...
Three core technologies are needed for automated trading: data mining, intelligent trading agents and virtual institutions in which informed trading agents can trade securely both with each other and with human agents in a natural way. This paper describes a demonstrable prototype that integrates these three technologies and is available on the Wor...
In cases of extremely imbalanced dataset with high dimensions, standard machine learning techniques tend to be overwhelmed by the large classes. This paper rebalances skewed datasets by compressing the majority class. This approach combines Vector Quantization and Support Vector Machine and constructs a new approach, VQ-SVM, to rebalance datasets w...
Knowledge base maintenance is managed by constructing a formal model. In this model the representation of each chunk of knowledge
encapsulates the knowledge in a set of declarative rules, each of which in turn encapsulates the knowledge in a set of imperative
programs. In this model an “item” is the unit of knowledge representation. Items are at a...
A knowledge-based system acts as an intelligent agent to manage workflows. This knowledge-based system represents both organisational rules and cultural factors, as well as the state of the decision making environment. An experimental intelligent workflow system has been built to manage the processing of applications received by a university depart...
Emergent processes are business processes whose execution is determined by the prior knowledge of the agents involved and by the knowledge that emerges during a process instance. The amount of process knowledge that is relevant to a knowledge-driven process can be enormous and may include commonsense knowledge. If a process' knowledge cannot be rep...
A general simulation model of market competition is developed to explore the effectiveness of and interactions between different types of product exploration and exploitation strategies, that is, innovation, imitation and process improvement. The model, like real markets, is highly non-linear such that analytical solutions are not possible. We use...
Knowledge simplification is a process which removes unnecessary duplication from raw knowledge. The presence of unnecessary duplication can make knowledge hard to understand and hard to maintain. If two items of raw knowledge share an unstated sub-rule then any changes to that sub-rule will require that those two knowledge items should both be modi...
Biologically realistic computer simulation of vertebrate lo- comotion is an interesting and challenging problem with applications in computer graphics and robotics. One current approach simulates a rel- atively simple vertebrate, the lamprey, using recurrent neural networks for the spine and a physical model for the body. The model is realized as a...
Fully automated trading, such as e-procurement, using the Internet is virtually unheard of today. Three core technolo- gies are needed to fully automate the trading process: data mining, intelligent trading agents and virtual institutions in which informed trading agents can trade securely both with each other and with human agents in a natural way...
Fully automated trading, such as e-procurement, is virtually unheard of today. Trading involves the maintenance of effective business relationships, and is the complete process of: need identification, product brokering, supplier brokering, offer-exchange, contract negotiation, and contract execution. Three core technologies are needed to fully aut...
An approach to auctions and bidding is founded on observations and expectations of the opponents' behavior and not on assumptions concerning the opponents' motivations or internal reasoning. The approach draws ideas from information theory. A bidding agent employs maximum entropy inference to determine its actions on the basis of this uncertain dat...
Traditional bag-of-words model and recent word- sequence kernel are two well-known techniques in the field of text categorization. Bag-of-words representa- tion neglects the word order, which could result in less computation accuracy for some types of documents. Word-sequence kernel takes into account word order, but does not include all informatio...
An argumentation based negotiation model is supported by information theory. Argumentative dialogues change the models of agents with respect to ongoing relationships be- tween them. Trust and Honour are key components. Trust measures expected deviations of behaviour in the execution of commitments. Honour measures the expected integrity of the arg...
The paper discusses an approach of using traditional time series analysis, as domain knowledge, to help the data-preparation of support vector machine for classifying documents. Classifying unexpected news impacts to the stock prices is selected as a case study. As a result, we present a novel approach for providing approximate answers to classifyi...
The potential size of the electronic business market offers great incentives to trading agents that can bargain, bid in auctions
and trade in exchanges. Much of business negotiation is multi-issue. A generic ‘information-based’ agent is proposed for multi-issue
negotiation. Successful negotiation depends on shrewd strategies driven by the right inf...
This paper provides a framework of using news articles and economic data to model the exchange rate changes between Euro and
US dollars. Many studies have conducted on the approach of regressing exchange rate movement using numerical data such as
macroeconomic indicators. However, this approach is effective in studying the long term trend of the mo...
Trust measures the relationship between commitment and perceived execution of contracts, and is the foundation for the confidence
that an agent has in signing a contract. Negotiation is an information exchange process as well as a proposal exchange process.
A rich decision model for intelligent agents involved in multi issue negotiations is describ...
Negotiation is an information exchange process as well as an offer exchange process. Theories of competitive negotiation are typically founded on game theory where the agent's utility function is the focus. If an agent is uncertain of the integrity of its information then it may not know its utility with certainty. Here what an agent knows and how...
A complete, immersive, distributed virtual trading environment is described. Virtual worlds technology provides an immersive
environment in which traders are represented as avatars that interact with each other, and have access to market data and
general information that is delivered by data and text mining machinery. To enrich this essentially soc...
In a multiagent system agents negotiate with one another to distribute the work in an attempt to balance the incompatible
goals of optimising the quality of the result, optimising system performance, maximising payoff, providing opportunities for
poor performers to improve and balancing workload. This distribution of work is achieved by the delegat...
An agent architecture is described with high-level process management applications in mind. The agent is “information-based”
in that it is designed to operate with real-time information streams. The information that it receives may be of questionable
integrity, and is represented in probabilistic first-order logic. The agent applies entropy-based i...
Business relationships, and the sense of trust that they embody, provides an environment in which trade may be conducted with
confidence. Trading involves the maintenance of effective relationships, and refers to the process of: need identification,
partner selection, offer-exchange, contract negotiation, and contract execution. So we use the term...
Evaluation of the MAS-CommonKADS approach for the development of agent-oriented software leads us to propose a number of conceptual modelling elements for inclusion in the metamodelling-based OPEN method engineering approach. In order to support the concepts in MAS-CommonKADS using this existing process framework (namely OPEN), we identify three ne...
In this paper we present a rich decision model for intelligent agents involved in multi issue negotiations. The model, grounded on information theory, takes into account the aspects of trust and preference to devise mechanisms to manage dialogues. The model supports the design of agents that aim to take 'informed decisions' taking into account that...
Agent-oriented methodologies frequently make use of terms such as goal and task but do so in an inconsistent manner. We seek to rationalize the use of these terms by undertaking an etymological and metamodel-based analysis of a significant number of these AO methodologies and recommend that the word task be avoided; instead, the word action could b...