Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T20:11:14.979Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Software agents: an overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Hyacinth S. Nwana
Hyacinth S. Nwana
Affiliation:
Intelligent Systems Research, Advanced Applications & Technology Department, BT Laboratories, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, Suffolk IP5 7RE, UK (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Agent software is a rapidly developing area of research. However, the overuse of the word “agent” has tended to mask the fact that, in reality, there is a truly heterogeneous body of research being carried out under this banner. This overview paper presents a typology of agents. Next, it places agents in context, defines them and then goes on, inter alia, to overview critically the rationales, hypotheses, goals, challenges and state-of-the-art demonstrators of the various agent types in our typology. Hence, it attempts to make explicit much of what is usually implicit in the agents literature. It also proceeds to overview some other general issues which pertain to all the types of agents in the typology. This paper largely reviews software agents, and it also contains some strong opinions that are not necessarily widely accepted by the agent community.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 205 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Agre, PE, 1988. The dynamic structure of everyday life, PhD Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT.Google Scholar
Agre, PE and Chapman, D, 1987. “Pengi: An implementation of a theory of activity” In: Proceedings of the 6th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Morgan Kaufmann, 268–272.Google Scholar
Ambros-Ingerson, J and Steel, S, 1988. “Integrating planning, execution and monitoring” In: Proceedings of the 7th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-88) St Paul, MN, 83–88.Google Scholar
Amstrong, R, Freitag, D, Jopachims, T, and Mitchell, T, 1995. “Webwatcher: a learning apprentice for the World Wide Web” In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Information Gathering from Heterogeneous, Distributed Environments, AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Appleby, S and Steward, S, 1994. “Mobile software agents for control in telecommunications networks” BT Technological Journal 12 (2) 104–113, 04.Google Scholar
Bates, J, 1994. “The role of emotion in believable characters” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 122–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, AH and Gasser, L, 1988. Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Bratman, ME, Israel, DJ and Pollack, ME, 1988. “Plans and resource-bounded practical reasoning” Computational Intelligence 4 349–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, RA, 1986. “A robust layered control system for a mobile robot” IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation 2 (1) 14–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, RA, 1991a. “Elephants don't play chess” In: Maes, P (ed.) Designing Autonomous Agents: Theory and Practice from Biology to Engineering and Back The MIT press, 3–15.Google Scholar
Brooks, RA, 1991b. “Intelligence without representation” Artificial Intelligence 47 139–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, RA, 1991c. “Intelligence without reason” In: Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Morgan Kaufmann, 569–595.Google Scholar
Caglayan, A, Snorrason, M, Jacoby, J, Mazzu, J and Jones, R, 1996. “Lessons from Open Sesame! a user interface learning agent” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-A gent Technology (PAAM '96) London, 22–2404 61–74.Google Scholar
Carver, N and Lesser, V, 1995. “The DRESUN Testbed for research in FA/C distribution situation assessment: extensions to the model of external evidence” In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95) San Francisco, USA, 06 33–40.Google Scholar
Carver, N, Cvetanovic, Z and Lesser, V, 1991. “Sophisticated cooperation in distributed problem solving” In: Proceedings of the 9th National Conference on Artficial Intelligence 1, Anaheim, 191–198.Google Scholar
Chaib-draa, BMoulin, BMandiau, R and Millot, P, 1992. “Trends in distributed artificial intelligence” ArtifIcial Intelligence Review 6 35–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, D, 1992. Vision, Instruction and Action, MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chavez, A and Maes, P, 1996. “Kasbah: An agent marketplace for buying and selling goods” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM '96) London, 22–2404 75–90.Google Scholar
Cohen, PR and Levesque, HJ, 1990. “Intention is choice with commitment” Artificial Intelligence 42 213–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connah, D, 1994. “The design of interacting agents for use in interfaces” In: Brouwer-Janse, D and Harringdon, TL (eds), Human-Machine Communication for Educational Systems Design, NATO ASI Series, Series F, Computer and Systems Sciences 129 Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Cutkosky, MR, Engelmore, RS, Fikes, RE, Genesereth, MR, Gruber, TR, Tenenbaum, JM and Weber, JC, 1993. “PACT: An experiment in integrating concurrent engineering systems” IEEE Computer 1, 01 28–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, NJ and Weeks, R, 1995. “Jasper: Communicating information agents” In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the World Wide Web Boston, USA, 11.Google Scholar
Davis, R and Smith, RG, 1983. “Negotiation as a metaphor for distributed problem solving” Artificial Intelligence 20 63–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Decker, KS, 1995. “Distributed artificial intelligence testbeds” In: O'Hare, G and Jennings, N (eds.), Foundations of Distributed Artficial Intelligence, Chap 3, Wiley.Google Scholar
Decker, KS and Lesser, VR, 1993 “Designing a family of coordination algorithms” In: Proceedings of the 11th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence Washington, 217–224.Google Scholar
Dent, L, Boticario, J, McDermott, J, Mitchell, T and Zabowski, DA, 1992. “A personal learning apprentice” In: Proceedings of the 10th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence San Jose, California, AAAI Press, 96–103.Google Scholar
Doran, J, Carvajal, H, Choo, Y and Li, Y, 1991. “The MCS Multi-agent Testbed: developments and experiments” In: Deen, S. (ed.), Cooperating Knowledge based Systems Springer-Verlag, 240–251.Google Scholar
Durfee, EH, and Montogomery, TA, 1989. “MICE: A flexible testbed for intelligent coordination experiments” In: Proceedings of the 1989 Distributed Artificial Intelligence Workshop 25–40.Google Scholar
Durfee, EH, Lesser, VR and Corkill, D, 1987. “Coherent cooperation among communicating problem solvers” IEEE Transactions on Computers C-36 (11) 1275–1291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eichmann, DT, 1994a. “The RBSE Spider–balancing effective search against web load” In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the World Wide Web Geneva, Switzerland, 05 25–27, 369–378.Google Scholar
Eichmann, DT, 1994b. “Ethical web agents” In: Proceedings of the 2nd WWW Conference, http:// ww.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/.Google Scholar
Etzioni, O, 1993. “Intelligence without robots: a reply to Brooks” AI Magazine 14 (4) 7–13.Google Scholar
Etzioni, O, and Weld, D, 1994. A softbot-based interface to the internet” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 72–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferber, J, 1994. “Simulating with reactive agents” In: Hillebrand, E and Stender, J (eds.), Many Agent Simulation and Arficial Life lOS Press, 8–28.Google Scholar
Ferguson, IA, 1992a. “Towards an architecture for adaptive, rational, mobile agents” In: Werner, E and Demazeau, Y (eds.), Decentralized Al 3: Proceedings of the 3rd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Worlds (MAAMA W-91) Elsevier, 249–262.Google Scholar
Ferguson, IA, 1992b. TouringMachines: An architecture for dynamic, rational, mobile agents. PhD Thesis, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
Fikes, RE and Nilsson, NJ, 1971. “STRIPS: A new approach to the application of theorem proving to problem solving” Artificial Intelligence 2 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finin, T and Wiederhold, G, 1991. “An overview of KQML: A knowledge query and manipulation language” Department of Computer Science, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Fisher, K, Muller, JP and Pischel, M, 1996. “Unifying control in a layered agent architecture” Technical Report TM–94–05, German Research Center for AI-(DFKI GmbH).Google Scholar
Foner, L, 1993. “What's an agent, anyway? A sociological case study” Agents Memo 93–01, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Foner, L, 1996. “A multi-agent referral system for MatchMaking” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM ') London, 22–2404 245–262.Google Scholar
Gasser, L, 1991. “Social conceptions of knowledge and action: DAI foundations and open systems” Artificial Intelligence 47 107–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gasser, L and Huhns, M, 1989. DistributedArtf1cial Intelligence 2 Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Gasser, L, Braganza, C and Herman, N, 1987. “MACE: A flexible testbed for distributed AI research” Huhns, M (ed.), Distributed Artficial Intelligence, Research Notes in Artificial Intelligence Pitman, 119–152.Google Scholar
Gasser, L, Rosenschein, JS and Ephrati, E, 1995. “Introduction to multi-agent systems” Tutorial A Presented at the 1st International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems San Francisco CA,, 06.Google Scholar
Georgeff, M, 1996. “Agents with motivation: essential technology for real world applications” In: The First International Conference on the Practical Applications of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology London, UK, 24 04.Google Scholar
Georgeff, MP and Ingrand, FF, 1989. “Decision-making in an embedded reasoning system” In: Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Arficial Intelligence Detroit, MI. Morgan Kaufmann, 972–978.Google Scholar
Genesereth, MR and Ketchpel, SP, 1994. “Software agents” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 48–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, M and Wavish, PR, 1991. “Simulating and implementing agents and multiple agent systems” In: Proceedings of the European Simulation Multi-Conferencce Copenhagen, 06.Google Scholar
Greif, I, 1994. “Desktop agents in group-enabled products” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 100–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruber, T, 1991. “Ontolingua: A mechanism to support portable ontologies” KSL-91–66, Stanford University Knowledge Systems Laboratory.Google Scholar
Guilfoyle, C, 1995. “Vendors of agent technology” In: UNICOM Seminar on Intelligent Agents and their Business Applications, 8–911 London, 135–142.Google Scholar
Hayes-Roth, B, 11991. “An integrated architecture for intelligent agents” SIGART Bulletin 2 (4) 79–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes-Roth, B, 1995. “An architecture for adpative intelligent systems” Artificial Intelligence 72 (1–2) 329–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes-Roth, B, Brownston, L and van Gent, R, 1995. “Multiagent collaboration in directed improvisation” Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95) San Francisco, USA, 06, 148–153.Google Scholar
Hermens, L and Schlimmer, J, 1993. “A machine learning apprentice for the completion of repetitive forms” In: Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications IEEE Press, 164–;170.Google Scholar
Hewitt, C, 1977. “Viewing control structures as patterns of passing messages” Artificial Intelligence 8 (3) 323–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huhns, MN and Singh, MP, 1994. “Distributed artificial intelligence for information systems” CKBS-94 Tutorial, 0615, University of Keele, UK.Google Scholar
Indermaur, K, 1995. “Baby steps” Byte, 03, 97–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huhns, MN, Jacobs, N, Ksieyk, T, Shen, W-M, Singh, MP and Cannata, PE, 1993. “Integrating enterprise information models in Carnot” In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems (ICI-CIS) 32–42.Google Scholar
Jennings, NR, 1993. “Specification and implementation of a belief desire joint-intention architecture for collaborative problem solving” Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems 2 (3) 289–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, NR, Varga, LZ, Aarnts, RP, Fuchs, J and Skarek, P, 1993. “Transforming StandAlone expert systems into a community of cooperating agents” International Journal of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 6 (4) 317–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, N, Corera, JM, Laresgoiti, L, Mamdani, E, Perriollat, F, Skarek, P and Varga, L, 1995. “Using ARCHON to develop real-world DAI applications for electricity transportation and particle accelerator control” IEEE Expert Special Issue on Real World Applications of DAI systems.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaebling, LP and Rosenschein, SJ, 1990. “Action and planning in embedded agents” In: Maes, P (ed), Designing Autonomous Agents: Theory and Practice from Biology to Engineering and Back, MIT Press, 35–48.Google Scholar
Kay, A, 1990. “User interface: A personal view” In: Laurel, B (ed.), The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
King, JA, 1995. “Intelligent agents: bringing good things to life” AI Expert 02, 17–19.Google Scholar
Kozierok, R and Maes, P, 1993. “A learning interface agent for scheduling meetings” In: Proceedings of the ACM-SIGCHI International Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces Florida, 81–93.Google Scholar
Lang, K, 1995. “Newsweeder: learning to filter netnews” In: Proceedings of the Machine Learning Conference.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lashkari, Y, Metral, M and Maes, P, 1994. “Collaborative interface agents” In: Proceedings of the 12th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence 1 AAAI Press, 444–449.Google Scholar
Lesser, V and Corkill, D, 1981. “Functionally accurate, cooperative distributed systems” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics C-11 (1) 81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, R, Cohen, P, Kunz, J, Nass, C, Christiansen, T and Jin, Y, 1994. “The virtual design team: simulating how organisational structure and communication tools affect team performance” In: Carley, K and Prietula, M (eds.), Computational Organisation Theory Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Lieberman, H, 1995. “Letizia: An agent that assists web browsing” In: Proceedings of IJCAI95 AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Maes, P (ed), 1991a. Designing Autonomous Agents: Theory and Practice from Biology to Engineering and Back MIT Press.Google Scholar
Maes, P, 1991b. “Situated agents can have goals” In: Maes, P (ed), Designing Autonomous Agents: Theory and Practice from Biology to Engineering and Back MIT Press, 49–70.Google Scholar
Maes, P, 1994. “Agents that reduce work and information overload” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 31–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maes, P, 1995a. “Intelligent software” Scientific American 273 (3) 09.Google Scholar
Maes, P, 1995b. “Artificial intelligence meets entertainment: lifelike autonomous agents” Communications of the ACM 38 (11) 11 108–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minsky, M, 1985. The Society of Mind Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T, Caruana, R, Freitag, D, McDermott, J and Zabowski, D, 1994. “Experience with a learning personal assistant” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 81–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moukas, A, 1996. “Ainalthaea: Information discovery and filtering using a multiagent evolving ecosystem” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM '96) London, 22–2404 421–436.Google Scholar
Muller, JP, 1994. “A conceptual model for agent interaction” In: Deen, SM (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Working Conference on Cooperative Knowledge Based Systems (CKBS–94) Keele University: Dake Centre, 213–234.Google Scholar
Muller, JP, Pishel, M and Thiel, M, 1995. “Modelling reactive behaviour in vertically layered agent architectures” In: Wooldridge, M and Jennings, N (eds.), Intelligent Agents, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 890 Springer-Verlag, 261–276.Google Scholar
Musliner, DH, Durfee, EH and Shin, KG, 1993. “CIRCA: A cooperative intelligent real-time control architecture” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man Cybernetics 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, A, 1982. “The knowledge level” Artificial Intelligence 18 87–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norman, D, 1994. “How might people interact with agents” Communications of the ACM 37 (7) 68–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nwana, HS, 1993. “Simulating a children's playground in ABLE” Working Report, Department of Computer Science, Keele University UK.Google Scholar
Nwana, HS, 1996. “The potential benefits of software agent technology to BT” Internal Technical Report, Project NOMADS, Intelligent Systems Research, AAandT, BT Labs, UK.Google Scholar
Nwana, HS, Lee, L and Jennings, NR, 1996. “Coordination in software agent systems” British Telecommunications Technology Journal 14 (4), 10.Google Scholar
Nwana, HS and Wooldridge, M, 1996, “Software Agent Technologies”, British Telecommunications Technology Journal, 14 (4), 10.Google Scholar
O'Brien, P and Wiegand, M, 1996. “Agents of change in Business Process Management” British Telecommunications Technology Journal, 14 (4), 10.Google Scholar
Ovum, 1994. Ovum Report, Intelligent Agents: The New Revolution in Software.Google Scholar
Papazoglou, MP, Laufman, SC and Sellis, TK, 1992. “An organisational framework for cooperating intelligent information systems” Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems 1 (1) 169–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plu, M, 1995. “Software agents in telecommunications network environments” UNICOM Seminar on Intelligent Agents and their Business Applications 8–9 11 London, 225–243.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, ZW (ed), 1987. The Robot's Dilemma: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence Ablex.Google Scholar
Rao, AS and Georgeff, MP, 1995. “BDI agents: from theory to practice” In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95) San Francisco, USA, 06, 312–319.Google Scholar
Reinhardt, A, 1994. “The network with smarts” Byte 10, 51–64.Google Scholar
Rosenschein, JS, 1985. Rational Interaction: Cooperation Among Intelligent Agents. PhD Thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Rosenschein, JS and Zlotkin, G, 1994. Rules of Encounter: Designing Conventions for Automated Negotiation among Computers MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, BJ and Starner, T, 1996. “Remembrance agent: A continuously automated information retrieval system” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM '96) London, 22–2404, 487–496.Google Scholar
Shardanand, U and Maes, P, 1995. “Social information filtering for aatomating ‘Word of Mouth’” In: Proceedings of CHI-95 Denver, CO.Google Scholar
Sheth, B and Maes, P, 1993. “Evolving agents for personalised information filtering” In: Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications.Google Scholar
Shoham, Y, 1993. “Agent-oriented programming” Artificial Intelligence 60 (1) 51–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, RG, 1980. “The contract net protocol: high-level communication and control in a distributed problem solver” IEEE Transactions on Computers C29 (12).Google Scholar
Smith, R, 1996a. “Software agent technology” In: Proceedings of The First International Conference on the Practical Applications of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology London, UK, 557–571.Google Scholar
Smith, R, 1996b. Personal communication.Google Scholar
Steels, L, 1990. “Cooperation between distributed agents through self-organisation” In: Demazeau, Y and Muller, JP (eds.), Decentralized Al—Proceedings of the 1st MAAMAW Elsevier, 175–196.Google Scholar
Suchman, LA, 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sycara, K, 1995. “Intelligent agents and the information revolution” In: UNICOM Seminar on Intelligent Agents and their Business Applications 8–9 11 London, 143–159.Google Scholar
Titmuss, R, Winter, CS and Crabtree, B, 1996. “Agents, mobility and multimedia information” In: Proceedings the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM '96) London, 22–2404 693–708. URL1: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.crnu.edu/project/theo-5/www/pleiades.html. URL2: http://www.genmagic.com. URL3: http://www.sel.sony.com. URL4: http://www.metacrawler.com. URL5: http://haas.berkeley-edu/PFOlOheilman/agents/.Google Scholar
Wavish, P and Graham, M, 1994. “Roles, skills and behaviour” In: Wooldridge, M and Jennings, N (eds.), Intelligent Agents, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 890 Springer-Verlag, 371–386.Google Scholar
Wavish, P and Graham, M, 1995. “A situated action approach to implementing characters in computer games” Applied AI Journal to appear.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wayner, P, 1995a. “Free agents” Byte, 03, 105–114.Google Scholar
Wayner, P, 1995b. Agents Unleashed: A Public Domain Look at Agent Technology AP Professional.Google Scholar
Wayner, P and Joch, A, 1995. “Agents of change” Byte, 03 94–95.Google Scholar
Wiederhold, G, 1992. “Mediators in the architecture of future information systems” IEEE Computer 25 (3) 38–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittig, T (ed), 1992. ARCHON: An Architecture for Multi-Agent Systems Ellis Horwood.Google Scholar
Wolfson, D, Voorhees, E and Flatley, M, 1989. “Intelligent routers” In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems DCS-9 Newport Beach, CA, 06 5–9. IEEE Press, 37 1–376.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, M, 1995. “Conceptualising and developing agents” In: Proceedings of the UNICOM Seminar on Agent Software 25–2604, London, 40–54.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, M and Jennings, N, 1995a. “Intelligent agents: theory and practice” The Knoivledge Engineering Review 10 (2) 115–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, M and Jennings, N (eds.), 1995b. Intelligent Agents, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 890 Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, M, Mueller, JP and Tambe, M, 1996. Intelligent Agents II, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1037 Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Zlotkin, G and Rosenschein, JS, 1989. “Negotiation and task sharing among autonomous agents in cooperative domains” In: Proceedings of the 11th IJCAI Detroit, MI, 912–917.Google Scholar