Abstract
Large scale open multi-agent systems where agents need services of other agents but may not know their contact information require agent location mechanisms. Solutions to this problem are usually based on middle-ware such as matchmakers, brokers, yellow-pages agents and other middle agents. The disadvantage of these is that they impose infrastructure, protocol and communication overheads, and they do not easily scale up. We suggest a new approach to agent location, which does not require middle agents and protocols for using them. Our approach is simple and scales up with no infrastructure or protocol overheads, thus may be very useful for large scale MAS. In this paper, we analytically study the properties of our approach and discuss its advantages.
This material is based on work supported in part by MURI contract N00014-96-1222 and CoABS Darpa contract F30602-98-2-0138.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Decker, K., Sycara, K., Williamson, M.: Middle-agents for the internet. In: Proceeding of IJCAI 1997, Nagoya, Japan, pp. 578–583 (1997)
Ephrati, E., Pollack, M., Ur, S.: Deriving multi-agent coordination through filtering strategies. In: IJCAI 1995, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, pp. 679–685 (1995)
Genesereth, M.R., Ketchpel, S.P.: Software Agents. Communications of the ACM 37(7), 48–53 (1994)
Jha, S., Chalasani, P., Shehory, O., Sycara, K.: A formal treatment of distributed matchmaking. In: Proceeding of Agents 1998, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pp. 457–458 (1998)
Kuokka, D., Harada, L.: Matchmaking for information agents. In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 1995), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 1995, pp. 672–679 (1995)
Nodine, M., Unruh, A.: Facilitating open communication in agent systems: the infosleuth infrastructure. In: Rao, A., Singh, M.P., Wooldridge, M.J. (eds.) ATAL 1997. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1365, pp. 281–296. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Shehory, O., Kraus, S.: Methods for task allocation via agent coalition formation. Artificial Intelligence 101(1-2), 165–200 (1998)
Shehory, O., Kraus, S., Yadgar, O.: Goal-satisfaction in large-scale agent-systems: a transportation example. In: Singh, M., Muller, J. (eds.) Intelligent Agents V — Proceeding of ATAL 1998. LNCS (LNAI), Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Sycara, K., Lu, J., Klusch, M., Widoff, S.: Dynamic service matchmaking among agents in open information environments. Journal of the ACM, SIGMOD Record, Special Issue on Semantic Interoperability in Global Information (1999)
Wagner, T., Lesser, V.: Relating quantified motivations for organizationally situated agents. In: Jennings, N.R., Lespérance, Y. (eds.) Intelligent Agents VI — Proceedings of ATAL 1999. LNCS (LNAI), Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shehory, O. (2000). A Scalable Agent Location Mechanism. In: Jennings, N.R., Lespérance, Y. (eds) Intelligent Agents VI. Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. ATAL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1757. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10719619_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/10719619_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67200-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46467-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive