A Clustering Approach Based on Cooperative Agents to Improve Decision Support in ERP

Author(s):  
Nadjib Mesbahi ◽  
Okba Kazar ◽  
Saber Benharzallah ◽  
Merouane Zoubeidi ◽  
Djamil Rezki

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are a powerful technology for the design and implementation of autonomous intelligent systems that can handle distributed problem solving in a complex environment. This technology has played an important role in the development of data mining systems in the last decade, the purpose of which is to promote the extraction of information and knowledge from a large database and to make these systems more scalable. In this chapter, the authors present a clustering system based on cooperative agents through a centralized and common ERP database to improve decision support in ERP systems. To achieve this, they use multi-agent system paradigm to distribute the complexity of k-means algorithm in several autonomous entities called agents, whose goal is to group records or observations on similar objects classes. This will help business decision makers to make good decisions and provide a very good response time by the use of the multi-agent system. To implement the proposed architecture, it is more convenient to use the JADE platform while providing a complete set of services and have agents comply with the specifications FIPA.

Author(s):  
SOE-TSYR YUAN ◽  
ZENG-LUNG WU

Currently, systems of cooperative agents (multi-agent systems), possessing the capabilities of autonomy, adaptation, and cooperation, are being used in an increasingly wide variety of application areas, and the conversation-based multi-agent system design is the major design for those multi-agent systems. Supposedly, conversation-based multi-agent systems should have been prevailing enough for tackling dynamic aspects of problems in a variety of domains. However, for industries, multi-agent systems are still found to be in the birth stage where they only show their new values in anticipation for further explorations and improvements in order to attract critical mass of users of information executives or software developers. Nevertheless, what are the success factors that can result in a critical mass of multi-agent system designers? This paper shows one possible success factor — an infrastructure for the bottom-up design of multi-agent systems. The bottom-up design makes it possible for agents to be reassembled into multi-agent systems and reused as needed. However, what do we need to successfully support the bottom-up design? This paper is the first attempt to present a tool that fully supports the bottom-up design of multi-agent systems. The tool has three parts. The first part is a wrapper that wraps each agent so that it exempts the designers from the careful detailed deployment of the inter-relationships between cooperation knowledge and task knowledge inside the agent. This wrapper should be independent of the functions of agents. The second part is an environment that can support the wrapper to automate the cooperation process on behalf of agents. The third part is a graphical assembly panel for developers to visually configure wrapped agents residing at different places of the Internet into a working multi-agent system.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 941
Author(s):  
Tianhao Sun ◽  
Huiying Liu ◽  
Yongming Yao ◽  
Tianyu Li ◽  
Zhibo Cheng

In this paper, the time-varying formation tracking problem of the general linear multi-agent system is discussed. A distributed formation tracking protocol based on Riccati inequalities with adaptive coupling weights among the follower agents and the leader agent is designed for a leader-following multi-agent system under fixed and switching topologies. The formation configuration involved in this paper is expressed as a bounded piecewise continuously differentiable vector function. The follower agents will achieve the desired formation tracking trajectory of the leader. In traditional static protocols, the coupling weights depend on the communication topology and is a constant. However, in this paper, the coupling weights are updated by the state errors among the neighboring agents. Moreover, the stability analysis of the MAS under switching topology is presented, and proves that the followers also could achieve pre-specified time-varying formation, if the communication graph is jointly connected. Two numerical simulations indicate the capabilities of the algorithms.


Author(s):  
Robert E. Smith ◽  
Claudio Bonacina

In the multi-agent system (MAS) context, the theories and practices of evolutionary computation (EC) have new implications, particularly with regard to engineering and shaping system behaviors. Thus, it is important that we consider the embodiment of EC in “real” agents, that is, agents that involve the real restrictions of time and space within MASs. In this chapter, we address these issues in three ways. First, we relate the foundations of EC theory to MAS and consider how general interactions among agents fit within this theory. Second, we introduce a platform independent agent system to assure that our EC methods work within the generic, but realistic, constraints of agents. Finally, we introduce an agent-based system of EC objects. Concluding sections discuss implications and future directions.


Author(s):  
Haibin Zhu ◽  
MengChu Zhou

Agent system design is a complex task challenging designers to simulate intelligent collaborative behavior. Roles can reduce the complexity of agent system design by categorizing the roles played by agents. The role concepts can also be used in agent systems to describe the collaboration among cooperative agents. In this chapter, we introduce roles as a means to support interaction and collaboration among agents in multi-agent systems. We review the application of roles in current agent systems at first, then describe the fundamental principles of role-based collaboration and propose the basic methodologies of how to apply roles into agent systems (i.e., the revised E-CARGO model). After that, we demonstrate a case study: a soccer robot team designed with role specifications. Finally, we present the potentiality to apply roles into information personalization.


Author(s):  
NAJLA AHMAD ◽  
ARVIN AGAH

In a multi-agent system, an agent may utilize its idle time to assist other agents in the system. Intent recognition is proposed to accomplish this with minimal communication. An agent performing recognition observes the tasks other agents are performing and, unlike the much studied field of plan recognition, the overall intent of an agent is recognized instead of a specific plan. The observing agent may use capabilities that it has not observed. A conceptual framework is proposed for intent recognition systems. An implementation of the conceptual framework is tested and evaluated. We hypothesize that using intent recognition in a multi-agent system increases utility (where utility is domain specific) and decreases the amount of communication. We test our hypotheses using the domain of Cow Herding, where agents attempt to herd cow agents into team corrals. A set of metrics, including task time and number of communications, is used to compare the performance of plan recognition and intent recognition. In our results, we find that intent recognition agents communicate fewer times than plan recognition agents. In addition, unlike plan recognition, when agents use the novel approach of intent recognition, they select unobserved actions to perform. Intent recognition agents were also able to outperform plan recognition agents by consistently scoring more points in the Cow Herding domain. This research shows that under certain conditions, an intent recognition system is more efficient than a plan recognition system. The advantage of intent recognition over plan recognition becomes more apparent in complex domains.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (11) ◽  
pp. 1264-1273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis N. Athanasiadis ◽  
Marios Milis ◽  
Pericles A. Mitkas ◽  
Silas C. Michaelides

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