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Transforming Stand-alone Expert Systems into a Community of Cooperating Agents

Transforming Stand-alone Expert Systems into a Community of Cooperating Agents
Transforming Stand-alone Expert Systems into a Community of Cooperating Agents
Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) systems in which multiple problem solving agents cooperate to achieve a common objective is a rapidly emerging and promising technology. However, as yet, there have been relatively few reported cases of such systems being employed to tackle real-world problems in realistic domains. One of the reasons for this is that DAI researchers have given virtually no consideration to the process of incorporating pre-existing systems into a community of cooperating agents. Yet reuse is a primary consideration for any organisation with a large software base. To redress the balance, this paper reports on an experiment undertaken at the CERN laboratories in which two pre-existing and standalone expert systems for diagnosing faults in a particle accelerator were transformed into a community of cooperating agents. The experiences and insights gained during this process provide a valuable first step towards satisfying the needs of potential users of DAI technology - identifying the types of changes required for cooperative problem solving, quantifying the effort involved in transforming standalone systems to ones suitable for cooperation and highlighting the benefits of a cooperating systems approach in a realistic industrial application.
Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Cooperating Expert Systems, Fault Diagnosis, Particle Accelerator Control.
317-331
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Varga, L. Z.
f5d021fb-1f60-4b31-b1a3-cc000af5d08b
Aarnts, R. P.
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Fuchs, J.
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Skarek, P.
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Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Varga, L. Z.
f5d021fb-1f60-4b31-b1a3-cc000af5d08b
Aarnts, R. P.
bc49308e-11e9-4263-9ce8-3a60f6cadfaa
Fuchs, J.
a6edd6b0-e634-40d4-bc5e-2026acb52054
Skarek, P.
2a2cdc1f-4b83-4a23-8f2b-8a6f418cc901

Jennings, N. R., Varga, L. Z., Aarnts, R. P., Fuchs, J. and Skarek, P. (1993) Transforming Stand-alone Expert Systems into a Community of Cooperating Agents. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 6 (4), 317-331.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) systems in which multiple problem solving agents cooperate to achieve a common objective is a rapidly emerging and promising technology. However, as yet, there have been relatively few reported cases of such systems being employed to tackle real-world problems in realistic domains. One of the reasons for this is that DAI researchers have given virtually no consideration to the process of incorporating pre-existing systems into a community of cooperating agents. Yet reuse is a primary consideration for any organisation with a large software base. To redress the balance, this paper reports on an experiment undertaken at the CERN laboratories in which two pre-existing and standalone expert systems for diagnosing faults in a particle accelerator were transformed into a community of cooperating agents. The experiences and insights gained during this process provide a valuable first step towards satisfying the needs of potential users of DAI technology - identifying the types of changes required for cooperative problem solving, quantifying the effort involved in transforming standalone systems to ones suitable for cooperation and highlighting the benefits of a cooperating systems approach in a realistic industrial application.

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Published date: 1993
Keywords: Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Cooperating Expert Systems, Fault Diagnosis, Particle Accelerator Control.
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 252092
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/252092
PURE UUID: b0a962ea-7303-40db-bed5-67d1ce87463e

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Date deposited: 13 Dec 1999
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 05:15

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Contributors

Author: N. R. Jennings
Author: L. Z. Varga
Author: R. P. Aarnts
Author: J. Fuchs
Author: P. Skarek

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