The first book to provide an integrative presentation of the issues, challenges and success of designing, building and using agent applications. The chapters presented are written by internationally leading authorities in the field, with a general audience in mind. The result is a unique overview of agent technology applications, ranging from an introduction to the technical foundations to reports on dealing with specific agent systems in practice.
2 chapter contains examples of intelligent agents, arranged according to their appli cation areas. Chapter 7 closes with a prospective view of the future development of intelligent agents. Everyone concerned with the Internet and the new possibilities of information and communication technology knows that nowadays there is no area that is devel oping faster. The authors are aware of the dynamics of this research area and its effects when they describe such a fast developing area in a slow, traditional me dium like a book. One thing is sure today: when the book appears on the market, new intelligent agents will already exist and some of the hypotheses made by this book will have been shown to be incorrect. Why, despite this, does it make sense to write a classical book on this subject? Is there an alternative? Experience shows that the majority of the people in business and public life who make decisions on the use of new technologies continue to prefer books and articles in periodicals rather than electronic sources such as the Internet. Or is there some other reason for the enormous success of Nicolas Negroponte's book Being Digital, which we thank for multimedia and many concepts of the digital and networked world, and even intelligent agents? Today, a book is still the only way to establish a new area.
Intelligent agent technology is emerging as one of the most important and rapidly advancing areas. Researchers are developing a number of agent-based applications and multi-agent systems in a variety of fields, such as: electronic commerce, supply chain management, resource allocation, intelligent manufacturing, mass customization, industrial control, information retrieval and filtering, collaborative work, mobile commerce, decision support, and computer games. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies presents an outstanding collection of the latest research associated with intelligent agents and information technologies. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies provides a comprehensive analysis of issues related to agent design, implementation, integration, deployment, evaluation, and business value. This book presents research results and application of agents and other intelligent information technologies in various domains. Application of Agents and Intelligent Information Technologies offers the intelligent information technologies that will potentially revolutionize the work environment as well as social computing.
The concept of an intelligent agent – a computational system capable of performing certain tasks autonomously – derived from the growing potential of digital computers in the mid 20th century and had been widely adopted by the early 1990s. Partly in parallel with this concept, the perspective of ambient intelligence (AmI) emerged in the late 1990s. Agent technology and AmI have many similarities, and the main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of the scientific area that integrates these two. The book addresses a wide variety of topics related to agents and AmI, including theoretical, practical, design, implementation, ethical and philosophical issues. The 12 chapters are arranged in four sections. The first consists of three chapters discussing ethical and philosophical issues; the second part explores various approaches that can be used to develop agent-based AmI Systems; the third part contains three chapters that share the goal to endow AmI systems with useful properties like intelligence and adaptivity and the last section presents concrete applications of agent-based AmI systems. This book provides an insight into recent achievements and future challenges at the intersection of agent technology and ambient intelligence and will assist the development of more intelligent, flexible, effective and user-friendly systems as well as posing critical questions about the future of the role of agents within the AmI perspective.
Build your own intelligent agent system... Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computer science that can be used to engineer complex computer programmes that behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments. Applications range from small programmes that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. This powerful technology is not widely used, however, as developing intelligent agent software requires high levels of training and skill. The authors of this book have developed and tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agent systems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developers can start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily from scratch saving valuable time and resources. Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers the questions “what are agents?” and “why are they useful?” but also the crucial question: “how do I design and build intelligent agent systems?” The book covers everything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively use this technology - including an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology. Read on for: a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and building intelligent agent systems. a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agent systems covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agents. PDT: Prometheus Design Tool – software support for the Prometheus design process. the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the design process throughout the book. Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT), can be found at: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheus This book is aimed at industrial software developers, software engineers and at advanced undergraduate students. It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.
This book presents a collection of thoroughly refereed papers drawn together from three meetings on multi-agent systems. Five of the tutorial lectures included were presented at the ACAI/EASSS 2001 summer school on MAS, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2001; seven revised reviewed student papers dealing with various aspects of MAS are included as well. A workshop on Adaptability and Embodiment using MAS, AEMAS 2001, also held in Prague, Czech Republic, concurrently with the ACAI/EASSS summer school, is represented by three papers. Finally, a further nine papers were selected from an International Workshop on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2001, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2001.
A state-of-the-art guide on how to build intelligent Web-based applications using Java Joseph and Jennifer Bigus update and significantly expand their book on building intelligent Web-based applications using Java. Geared to network programmers or Web developers who have previously programmed agents in Smalltalk or C++, this practical book explains in detail how to construct agents capable of learning and competing, including both design principles and actual code for personal agents, network or Web agents, multi-agent systems and commercial agents. New and revised coverage includes agent tools, agent uses for Web applications (including personalization, cross-selling, and e-commerce), and additional AI technologies such as fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms.
Intelligent agents are one of the most promising business tools in our information rich world. An intelligent agent consists of a software system capable of performing intelligent tasks within a dynamic and unpredictable environment. They can be characterised by various attributes including: autonomous, adaptive, collaborative, communicative, mobile, and reactive. Many problems are not well defined and the information needed to make decisions is not available. These problems are not easy to solve using conventional computing approaches. Here, the intelligent agent paradigm may play a major role in helping to solve these problems. This book, written for application researchers, covers a broad selection of research results that demonstrate, in an authoritative and clear manner, the applications of agents within our information society.
There is a large increase in the amount of information available on World Wide Web and also in number of online databases. This information abundance increases the complexity of locating relevant information. Such a complexity drives the need for improved and intelligent systems for search and information retrieval. Intelligent agents are currently used to improve the search and retrieval information on World Wide Web. The use of existing search and retrieval engines with the addition of intelligent agents allows a more comprehensive search with a performance that can be measured. Intelligent Agents for Data Mining and Information Retrieval discusses the foundation as well as the practical side of intelligent agents and their theory and applications for web data mining and information retrieval. The book can used for researchers at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels as well as a reference of the state-of-art for cutting edge researchers.
