Session A:  Agent Applications
    Session B:  Designing Agents and Agent Systems
    Session C:  Agents, Organisations, and Social Sciences

About the Discussion Boards

The symposium was organized in a way to favour open exchange of ideas. In particular, there were three discussion sessions, covering accepted contributions as given below. Each session had the following structure:

• One paper was selected as a long presentation per session
• A catalog of questions was be worked out for every session. This catalog was be sent to the authors beforehand, and all other authors in the session had a 15 minutes slot to describe how their work addresses these questions.
• After all had given their statements, there was time for an open discussion.

The purpose of these discussion boards was for proposal and discussion of questions for individual sessions. The questionnaires given for each session were derived from contributions as of Friday, March 27.

The discussion boards were deactivated on Monday, May 4 (preserving the present content). Get in touch with us if there's interest in reviving them!

Discussion Sessions

    Session A:  Agent Applications

Wednesday, 14.00-18.00, Room 34




Long Presentation:
153: Buerckert,H.-J., Fischer,K., Vierke,G.

TeleTruck: A Holonic Fleet Management System
(HTML version converted from PS by pp, PostScript version)


155: Tanaka,K.

Poly-Agent System Design Approach to Autonomous Anticipative Management

157: Yang,J., Pai,P., Honavar,V., Miller,L.

Mobile Intelligent Agents for Document Classification and Retrieval: A Machine Learning Approach

158: Kopetzky,R., Grohmann,A.

Using an Agent-Enhanced Approach for the Implementation of Environmental Information Systems of the Third Generation

160: Magnanelli,M., Erni,A., Norrie,M.

ACADEMIA: An Agent-Maintained Database Based on Information Extraction from Web Documents

176: Marik,V., Pechoucek,M., Hazdra,T., Stepankova,O.

ProPlanT - Multi-Agent System for Production Planning

Questionnaire:

1. There are many definitions of the term "agent". A good way of analysing what people have in mind if they talk about agents is to analyse how they use agents in their applications. Which are the distinguishing features of agents in your applications?
2. Where are the main benefits that agents buy you for your application domain?
3. What were the main pitfalls you experienced when building these applications using agent technology? (see also e.g.: Wooldridge M., Jennings N.: Pitfalls of Agent-Oriented Development. (Agents'98) for ideas on how to structure your statement)
4. The number of agent applications continues to increase, but the development of such systems can be resource-intensive. Are mature development techniques and tool support, for example, necessary for agent applications to become more widely deployed?
5. What tools and techniques do you use, or would you like to use to build agent applications?
6. Do agents demand different support or can traditional methods of application development be used? If so, how are agent applications different?

    Session B:  Designing Agents and Agent Systems

Thursday, 14.00-18.00, Room 34




Long Presentation:
149: Chantemargue,F., Dagaeff,T., Schumacher,M., Krone,O., Hirsbrunner,B.

Autonomous Agents: from Concepts to Implementations
(HTML version, PostScript version)

154: Baroni,P., Fogli,D., Guida,G., Mussi,S.

Modeling the Mental Activity of an Autonomous Agent: An Implementation Based on Intentions and Persuasions

164: Ventura,M.M., Pinto-Ferreira,C.A.

Problem Solving without Search

169: Jung,C.G.

On the Role of Computational Models for Specifying Hybrid Agents

173: Gouarderes,G., Canut,M.F., Sanchis,E.

From Mutant to Learning Agents: Different Agents to Model Learning Environments

Questionnaire:

1. How important is the architecture of an agent compared to the underlying theory, the knowledge representation formalism, or the problem-solving functionality (domain function) of the agent?
2. Which is the relationship (that can be exploited during design time) between the architecture of an agent and the types of application in which an agent is to be used? Are, according to your experience, some architectures better suited to design some sorts of systems than others? And if so, how?
3. Are development methodologies for agents appropriate at all? Is the field still too immature? Or is the time right?
4. How important are formal specifications for agents and agent systems? If you think they are important: which method do you feel best-suited, and why?
5. Where do you see the relationship betwen object-oriented modeling/design and agent-oriented modeling-design?
6. In order to bridge the gap between agent theories and practical software engineering, should we consider either providing theories at a lower level (i.e., approaching the problem from the formal/logical end), or programming languages/methodologies at a higher level?
7. How important are testbeds for agent-based systems? Why are there no testbeds for object-oriented systems?

    Session C:  Agents, Organisations, and Social Sciences

Friday, 11.00-13.00, Room 34




Long Presentation:
150: Woch,J.

Towards the Necessity of Constructivism as an Epistemology of Agents in the Social Sciences
(PostScript version)

135: Dautenhahn,K.

Grounding Agent Theory: The Social World Is Its Own Best Model

175: Bestougeff,H., Bouaissi,A.

Multi-Agent Architecture to Model and Simulate a Business Network of Recurrent Conversations and Associated Tasks

182: Kirn,S.

From Organizational Design to the Design of Software Agents: Towards a Multiagent Organization Theory

Questionnaire:

1. Which models of organisation theory do you think are most relevant (and useful) for the design of multiagent systems?
2. Social models were not developed with the idea of turning them into computational models in mind. Where do you see problems, ways, and trade-offs?
3. Agent vs multiagent system: very often, the granularity of agents and agent systems is not obvious. When would you look upon a system as an agent (described by an agent architecture), and when would you model it as a multiagent system (described by an organisation structure)? Can you think of any rules or guidelines that would apply here?
4. Are cognitive agents endowed with explicit mental representations (beliefs, desires, intentions, expectations, etc.) useful or necessary for simulating social and organisational phenomena, and why? How is this reconciliable with an emergentist view of macro-social cooperation?
5. How does your model reconcile individual autonomy and self interest with collective interest and performance?
6. Computer Science and Engineering are learning lessons from biology. What main lessons do you feel agent researchers should learn from sociology and human organisations?

Jörg Müller and Paolo Petta, Co-Chairs