Intelligent Agents


Schedule:

Course: Wednesday 15-17, INR 219
Exercises: Wednesday 17-18, INR 219

The main topic of this course are technologies for implementing  intelligent agents. Agents differ from conventional (object-oriented) software technology in one or more of the following 4 dimensions:

  1. autonomy: agents react themselves to observations of their environment without requiring explicit commands,
  2. proactiveness: agents recognize and react to changes in the environment which present opportunities,
  3. embeddedness:  agents' actions respect the real-time constraints imposed by the environment,
  4. distributedness:  many different kinds of agents can work together in the same system, and be added or removed without interrupting it.
    Beyond these basic characteristics of agent technology, agents are likely to become more intelligent:
     
    1. rational agents which have explicit goals and reasoning capabilities, thus giving them the ability for self-interested action,
    2. communicating agents which can cooperate and negotiate using powerful agent communication languages,
    3. adaptive agents which learn by themselves to fulfill their user's desires, or to react or survive in their environment,
    4. learning agents which are capable of improving their performance on the same task by reusing earlier experiences.


    The course builds on existing knowledge in AI and develops in particular the notions of autonomous and embedded behavior by focussing on electronic commerce scenarios where these are most actively used today. It will introduce adaptativity and learning into this context. Finally, we will consider technologies for implementing heterogeneous agent systems with general communication capabilities.

Exercises: Faculty/Assistants: Course Program: