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pdf - 395 K - Ecole des mines de Nantes

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Electronic commerce is a field in which agents can typically prove useful by reducinginformation overload and saving time for users. Autonomy and personalization allow agentsto act efficiently at the stages of product brokering, merchant brokering and negotiation [50].Agents can contact other agents or explore the Web to select relevant products within thescope of interest of the user, then select interesting offers for a given product and possibly<strong>de</strong>termine the terms of the transaction.However agents are not limited to the role of the buyer: they can be the seller or anintermediary (mediator, facilitator that maps consumers and producers, information provi<strong>de</strong>r)[51]. Thus many business tasks involved in e-commerce can be automated. Among others,examples of agents <strong>de</strong>dicated to e-commerce are MIT Media Lab’s Firefly and Kasbah [52].2.3.4 Industrial systems and logisticsCentralized, hierarchically-organized manufacturing planning and control is a mo<strong>de</strong>l that isoften consi<strong>de</strong>red as being too rigid for <strong>de</strong>aling with today’s dynamically changingenvironments [53]. Instead, more sophisticated systems are nee<strong>de</strong>d for more flexibility andfault tolerance. MASs are thus a useful approach thanks to their ability to handle complex,distributed systems. A big number of such systems are referenced in [53].For similar reasons MASs have been applied to logistics, for example air traffic managementor military operations (MokSAF [54]).2.3.5 GamesA big number of different kinds of games involve computer AI. A category that reallyinvolves agents is 3D action “Quake-like” games, in which agents are virtual characters. Suchautonomous characters have well-<strong>de</strong>fined goals, typically seek for enemies to <strong><strong>de</strong>s</strong>troy. Theysense their environment through their “range of sight” or by “hearing” noises. Then they reactto such signals, for example they protect the lea<strong>de</strong>r if he is in danger. They also takeinitiatives to reach their objective, for instance <strong>de</strong>ciding which path to take to reach the enemybase.2.4 Existing toolsThere exists a big number of tools that aim at facilitating the <strong>de</strong>velopment of agent-basedsystems. They range from specific programming languages ([55]) and component libraries toagent <strong>de</strong>velopment frameworks ([56]). Frameworks for building MASs are interesting in thecontext of this project because they do not provi<strong>de</strong> only facilities for building agents but alsoa generic <strong><strong>de</strong>s</strong>ign for agents and a basic implementation, easing rapid prototyping.Besi<strong><strong>de</strong>s</strong>, this project can involve a big number of agents, which may require to distribute themon several machines for correct performance. Agent platforms provi<strong>de</strong> the infrastructure forallowing agents to interoperate and they sometimes handle distribution. Such platforms arethus interesting. In addition to handling distribution and inter-machine agent communication,MSc EMOOSE Thesis – http://www.emn.fr/EMOOSE 19

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