FACILITATORS , MEDIATORS OR AUTONOMOUS AGENTS

Recently, agent tec hnology has been recognized as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent design and manufacturing systems. Several different architectures have been proposed in this research area. This paper discusses the conce pts and main characteristics of three different approaches: facilitator, mediator and autonomous agents. It is proposed that key fe atures of these different approaches be used to improve the development of concurrent design and manufacturing systems.

[1]  Sigrid Goldmann.  Procura: a project management model of concurrent planning and design , 1996, Proceedings of WET ICE '96. IEEE 5th Workshop on Enabling Technologies; Infrastucture for Collaborative Enterprises.

[2]  Brian R. Gaines,et al.  Mediator: an intelligent information system supporting the virtual manufacturing enterprise , 1995, 1995 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Intelligent Systems for the 21st Century.

[3]  H. Van Dyke Parunak,et al.  The AARIA agent architecture: an example of requirements-driven agent-based system design , 1997, AGENTS '97.

[4]  Michael Luck,et al.  A Formal Framework for Agency and Autonomy , 1995, ICMAS.

[5]  Carl Hewitt,et al.  A Universal Modular ACTOR Formalism for Artificial Intelligence , 1973, IJCAI.

[6]  Weiming Shen,et al.  An Experimental Multi-Agent Environment For Engineering Design , 1996, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[7]  Reid G. Smith,et al.  The Contract Net Protocol: High-Level Communication and Control in a Distributed Problem Solver , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[8]  Luc Steels,et al.  Exploiting analogical representations , 1990, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[9]  Nils J. Nilsson,et al.  Reacting, Planning, and Learning in an Autonomous Agent , 1996, Machine Intelligence 14.

[10]  Mark R. Cutkosky,et al.  An agent-based approach to concurrent cable harness design , 1994, Artif. Intell. Eng. Des. Anal. Manuf..

[11]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice , 1995, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[12]  David C. Brown,et al.  SINE: support for single function agents , 1970 .

[13]  Yoneo Yano,et al.  Interacting with a mediator agent in collaborative learning environments , 1995 .

[14]  Stefan Kirn,et al.  STRICT: Selecting The RIght architeCTure. A Blackboard-Based DAI Advisory System Supporting The Design if Distributed Production Planning & Control Applications , 1992, IEA/AIE.

[15]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice The Knowledge Engineering Review , 1995 .

[16]  Mark R. Cutkosky,et al.  PACT: an experiment in integrating concurrent engineering systems , 1993, Computer.

[17]  Douglas H. Norrie,et al.  Multi-agent Mediator architecture for distributed manufacturing , 1996, J. Intell. Manuf..

[18]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Designing autonomous agents: Theory and practice from biology to engineering and back , 1990, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[19]  Peter Edwards,et al.  Refinement in Agent Groups , 1995, Adaption and Learning in Multi-Agent Systems.

[20]  Charles J. Petrie.  The Redux' server , 1993, [1993] Proceedings International Conference on Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems.

[21]  Weiming Shen,et al.  MetaMorph II: an agent-based architecture for distributed intelligent design and manufacturing , 2000, J. Intell. Manuf..

[22]  Gregory R. Olsen,et al.  SHADE: Technology for Knowledge-based Collaborative Engineering , 1993 .

[23]  Martin K. Purvis,et al.  An Agent-Based Architecture for Software Tool Coordination , 1996, PRICAI Workshop on Intelligent Agent Systems.

[24]  Gio Wiederhold,et al.  Mediators in the architecture of future information systems , 1992, Computer.