Technology Review of Multi-Agent Systems and Tools

摘要

This document provided a review of current intelligent multi-agent technologies. It presents agent frameworks and agent construction toolkits available in the market today. The Navy Web-based Marketplace is a suitable environment for intelligent multi-agent technologies, where a distributed peer- to-peer process is the essential model with inter-agent communications and coordination. Reasoning with rules of thumb and heuristics are currently common practice as commands define their preferences and detailers make job assignments. This report provides recommendations for agent system development, agent framework, inference engines, and agent construction toolkits. A high- level system architecture is proposed to meet Navy Web-based Marketplace functional requirements. There are three major components of the proposal: (1) a web services-based, front-end at the presentation layer that provides friendly access for Sailors, commands, detailers, and counselors; (2) a workflow layer that provides support for business processes of the various user groups; and (3) and intelligent agent layer that provides the framework through which the agents communicate and negotiate for optimal matches between available Navy jobs and Sailors.