Foundations of Agents

1. Foundations of Agents

2. Foundations of Agents • Agent World • Agent Definitions • Agent’s Properties • Classification of Agents • Agent Autonomy • Concurrent Programming

3. Agent World

4. Agent Definitions • No concensus definition • An agent is a computatioal entity which • Acts on behalf of a person or other entities in an autonomous fashion • Performs its action with some level of proactivite and/or reactiveness • Exhibits some level of the key attributes of learning, cooperation and mobility

5. Properties • Autonomous • Interactive • Adaptive • Sociable • Mobile • Proxy • Reactive • Proactive

6. Properties • Intelligent • Rational • Unpredictable • Temporally Continuous • Learning • Coordinative • Cooperative • Competitive • Trustworthy

7. Classification of Agents

8. Classification of Agents

9. Classification of Agents

10. Autonomy • Absolute Autonomy • Social Autonomy • Interface Autonomy • Execution Autonomy • Design Autonomy

11. Concurrent Programming • Computing System • Processes • Threads • Synchronization • Examples

12. Computing System

13. Processes • A process is program code that is in some state of execution. • It has own address space, some or all of which are mapped by the OS into main memory. • It has a single Thread or Flow of control.

14. Processor • Single processor machine • Multitasking • MultiThreading • Concurrent Programming • Multi-processor machine • Parallel Programming

15. Threads • class A extends Thread { public void run() { . . .} } • Class A implements Runnable { public void run() { . . .} } • Main program: A a = new A(); a.start();

16. Thread methods • To stop a thread: • Interrupt() • To block a thread: • sleep(millisecond) • wait() • join()