Welcome

COMP667 Multiagent Systems

Introduction

Multiagent Systems (MAS) is an emerging subfield of AI that aims to provide both principles for design of complex systems involving multiple agents and mechanisms for coordination of independent agents� behaviors.
Two obvious questions about any type of technology are: (1) What advantages does it offer over the alternatives? (2) In what circumstances is it useful? And then you will know why you want to take this course.

The most important reason to use MAS when designing a system is that some domains require it. In particular, if there are different people or organizations with different (possibly conflicting) goals and proprietary information, then a multiagent system is needed to handle their interactions.

For example, consider an Oil & Gas production scenario in which oil and gas company X produces, transports and markets natural gas and oil, but subcontracts the well tasks such as drilling, well construction to other companies, Y1, Y2, �, Yn. In order to build a single system to automate (certain aspects) the production process, the internals of both companies X and Yi must be modeled. However, none of these companies is likely to want to relinquish information and/or control to a system designer representing the other company. Thus, MAS is necessary. The only feasible solution is to allow the various companies to create their own agents that accurately represent their goals and interests. They must then be combined into a multiagent system with the aid of some of the techniques to be introduced in this course. They include agent communication language and coordination mechanisms.



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