From: AAAI Technical Report WS-93-03. Compilation copyright © 1993, AAAI (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
Societies of Computation
- A FrameworkRune Gustavsson,
SwedishInstitute of Computer
Science,SICS
P.O. Box 1263, S-164 28 Kista, SWEDEN
emaihrunc@sics.se
Abstract
¯ Ibis document
givesa shortbackground
Io Societies
of Compulafion
(SoC).
Societies
of Computation
bringstogether
andexLcnds
ideasfromcontemporary
research
in Disu’ibuled
AI, CSCW
andHCIdesign.SoC
servesas a common
framework
for re.~.earch
projects
at SICS,
at theUniversity
of Ronneby-Karlskrona
andat theUniversity
of Lund
terns in interaction with an external worldhas
started [Malone1987], [Gasser Huhns19891,
[Simoudis 1991], [Kirsch 19911, IJennings
Wittig 1992] and [Kinneyet al 19921.
1. Introduction
Onebig challengefor the nextdecade
is to
build and maintainsystemsthat can interact
produc-tively with each other, with humans,
lind with the physical world.
A similar shift towardsknowledgesharing, in
the general sense, has influenced the current
research in the area of KBSand CSCW.
Prominent examplesin the KBSarea are the
DARPA-NSF
initiative on sharing and reuse
INecheset al 1991]and the Esprit project
Kads-ll [Wielingaet al. 1992]. TheEsprit
project COMIC
addresses knowledgesharing
from a CSCW
point of view, IMarmolin Sundblad 1993] and [Gustavsson 19931.
The interaction betweenagents, humanand
:lnifacts, requires establishing, maintaining,
and extending commongrounds. Common
grot, nds betweenhumanand computational
systemscan be aided by mediatorsthat link the
capabilities andnatural propertiesof tasks,
~,gents, people, and the world welive in. We
needsystemsthat are openand can grow; that
allocate resourcesfairly to get jobs donewithout requiring either centralized planningor
excessive communication.For agents with
muhiplegoals, coordination of actions must
proceed through mutual commitments.There
are important trade-offs betweencommunication needs, reasoningcapabilities of agents as
well as social awarenessof the agents
involved.
In workingwith intelligent agents, it is useful
to explore whatis happeningin such fields as
cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, neural modelingas well as m computer
science as such.
The frameworkof Societies of Computation
(SoC)provides a unifying view of future
information systems and also, and perhaps
more important, a common
yardstick for
definiqg and assessing research projects on
future informationsystems. In the following
weoutline a short backgroundand motivation
for introducing Societies of Computation.The
main componentsof SoCand a research
agendais also oudined.
SwedishInstitute of ComputerScience (SICS)
is at presentparticipating in three European
research programs supported by the EC. Two
projects, Kads-lI and COMIC,
are part of
Esprit initiatives. Thoseprojects are focusedon
advancementof techniques and methodologies
for development of KnowledgeBased Systems
(CommonKads)and for CSCW.
Thethird project, TANGO,
is part of the project area Socrates-IIof the Drive-IIinitiative.
TheDrive-II initiative concernsthe use of ITtechnologyin order to provide a safer and more
efficient use of the traffic infrastructureof
Europe.In Socrates-II the focus is on developmentof Traffic Information Centers (TICs) and
on developmentof interactive and dynamic
route guidancesystemsfor vehicles. A future
TICis an exampleof a SoCas described
below.
A summary of KADS-II, COMICand TANGOis provided in the Appendix.
The SIRENinitiative, by the Swedishgovernment, is going to provide a high speed communication network in Swedenduring the
comingfew years. SIRENhas roughly the
same objectives and goals as the NREN
ini-
2. Background
Ashift of perspective in DAIand AI from
investigations of systemsin isolation to sys96
tiative in the US.TheSIREN
initiative is based
on experiments using a high speed communication testbed, Multi-G,in the Stockholm
area, I MarrnolinSundbladl. Multi-Gconnects
SICSwith the Royal Institute of Technology,
and offices at SwedishTelecomand Ericsson
Telecom.In short, the SIREN
initiative will
provide a high speed communicationnetwork
whichserves as a backbonefor future SoC
projects.
componentsof Societies of Computationare
Agents and Knowledge Media KM:The
KnowledgeMedia provides communication
and visualization services. Agentsare of three
types; Personal Assistants PA’s, Mediating
Agents MA’sand Artificial Agents AA’s.
KnowledgeMedia supports Mechanismsof
Interactions (Mols) in the COMIC
sense.
Examplesare the Collaborative Desktop
(CoDesk)and the DIVE3-D environments
developed within the Multi-G framework
[Marmolin Sundblad]. CoDeskprovides a
workplacewith shared objects utilizing video
as a communicationmedia. DIVEis a Mol
based on Virtual Realities. Other examplesof
Mols, based on speech acts, are developed
within Agent Oriented Programming(AOP)
[Shoham19921, [Weihmayer, Tan 19921.
At the University of Lundthere is an ongoing
research on Anticipatory Autonomous
Agents
(AAA),IAstor et al 19901, [Davidsson19921.
Thesalient feature of AAA’s
is the agents model of the current environment
and itself as a
part of that environment.Wethus have an anticipatory systemin opposition to a causal system that uses knowledgeonly about previous
states to computethe next state.
At present, several projects basedon and
sometinles part of Kads-ll, COMIC,TANGO
and AAA’sare ongoing or planned in Sweden.
Someof the projects are utilizing the Multi-G
(SiRF.N)networks. The projects involves
research groups, from academiaand industry,
whoare geographically spread throughout
Sweden.The research groups are at SICS, the
RoyalInstitute of Technology,the University
of Stockholm,the University of RonnebyKarlskronaand the University of Lund.
Research groups at big companies,such as
Swedish Telecomand Ericsson Telecom, as
well as SMEsat RonnebySoft Center provide
the industrial competence.
Theprojects are of different nature, havedifferent goals and duration. Thepurposeof the
frameworkSocieties of Computation(SoC)
to provide a common
groundfor a certain class
of projects outlined belowin section 6.
PersonalAssistants are the agents direct
serving humanmembersof a Society of
Computation. Recent research in HMI,KBS
and humancentered design have identified
agents such as PA’s for dialogue management
and intelligent help and guidance[Laurel
1990].
Artificial Agentsare in the spirit of Agent
Oriented Programming[Shoham92], contemporary DAI[Gasser Huhns]and of the
Esprit ARCHON
project [Jennings Wittig
1992].
The communicationpatterns are derived from
task distributions, organizationstructures and
available Mols. Thoseissues are partly addressed in the CommonKads
methodology, in
COMIC,in AMIGO
[Pankoke-Babatz 1989]
and in the frameworks of AOPand ARCHON.
The MediatingAgents consistute the public
and service sector of the SoC.Theyenables the
co-operation of PA’sand AA’s, utilizing the
KnowledgeMediaat hand. The Mediating
Agentsalso serves as gatewaysto other
Societies of Computation.Examplesof Mediating Agentsfor distributed informationsystems
are described in [Wiederhold1991] and [Jennings Wittig 1992].
3. Societies of Computation
"1 lie framework
of Societiesof Computation
supports design of adaptive environmentsfor
cooperation, or rather co-existence, between
humansand artifacts. Anassessmentand extension of someof the current trends in
CSCW,Concurrent Engineering, HMI,
Distributed AI, Communication
of
! leterogeneous Agents [Weihmeier,Brandau
19901,I Covoet al 19921,AgentOriented
Programming,Distri-buted Data Bases and
Networkingsupports the following
architecture.
The agents, PA’s, MA’sand AA’shave all a
head-bodyarchitecture. Of special interest for
developmentof SoCis the concept of social
laws introduced in AOP,IShohamland the
conceptof joint responsibility introducedin
ARCHON
[Jennings Mamdani19921. The
concept of awarenessseemsalso to play a key
role in future SoCsystems. The ARCitON
architecture for a special purposeSoC,moni-
A Society of Computation(SoC) is knowledgelevel descriptionof co-existencein distributed informationsystems. Thearchitectural
97
toring electricity transport networks,is also of
interest to us.
the complexityof such systemit is importantto
identify and modeldifferent views and their
interrelations.
Therole of knowledgein flux i.e. the whys,
whens and hows to exchange knowledgeis a
key factor for co-operating agents. Theconsequences of knowledgein flux i.e. knowledge
assimilation and assessment,actions, negotiations and replanningsare also in focus of the
contemporary research [Tan, Weihmayer
1992I. Thementalcapabilities of agents and the
levels of services providedby the communication mediaare two other importantfactors for
communicatingheterogeneous agents, [Weihmayeret al 1993].
Thesuccess of knowledgelevel rtu)deling
manifested by the CommonKads
methodology,
as a backbonefor KBSdevelopment,is a starting point for a methodologyfor SoCdevelopment using modelsets.
A basic assumptionis that a modelset should
modelthe samething but from a different viewpoints. Thething they modelis a process. This
meansthat every modelhas someessentially
dynamicaspect to it: it has predictive power
with respect to the process it models.A viewpoint is characterized by a language,basically
an ontology. The ontology should be adequate
in that allowsto describe a class of processes.
A candidate modelset for SoCis at present the
following set of models:
¯ Organizational model
¯ Task model
Thehead of an SoCagent typically consist of
¯ a mentalstate
¯ a knowledgebase
¯ an interpreter
¯ an interaction model
For agents interacting with the physical
environment, we also have
¯ sensor organs
¯ actuators
Thebodyof an agent contains appropriate
mechanismsfor actions and problem solving
accordingto the competenceof the agent.
¯ Design model
The organization modelmodelsthe behavior in
terms of the structure (reporting, commanding,
and so forth) of an organizationand the dynamics whichthat implies.
Personal
Assistants
Mediating
Agents
To other
SoC
¯ Activity model
¯ Knowledge model
Thetask modelis a modelof the behavior in
terms of the tasks that needto be executedand
the wayin whichthese tasks contribute to the
desired organizationalobjective.
The knowledgemodel is a modelof behavior in
terms of the knowledge
that rationalizes the actions taken, no matter whotakes them(no ascription of knowledge
to agents is madeat this
point).
j Knowledge
| Media:
The design modelmodelsthe behavior in terms
of the physical structures and mechanisms
that
achieve the behavior.
Agents
The activity modelmodelsthe SoCsystem in
terms of a set of physical agents (as opposedto
logical agents in the organizational model)and
the perceivableactivities they performin the
world.Activities are either activities on the systemsthat problemsolving (in a general sense)
is about, or communication
activities among
different agents. Fourclasses of entities are
distinguishedin the activity model:
Figure!: Societiesof Computation
4. Working Assumptions
Thecentral idea behindSocietiesof Computati()n is to havea framework
for designingand
evaluating future information systems. Dueto
98
¯ systems
using features from ProblemSolving Methods
in CommonKads,
will be tested in the
manufac-turingarea.
¯ resources
¯ agents
Informationfiltering
Experiments
in intelligent filtering andretrieval
of information. MediatingAgentsfor informationfiltering and(natural language)translations are developedat SICSin collaboration
with industrial partners and research groups.
¯ media
Thesystemsare the external applications to the
SoC,for exampleprocesses being controlled,
devices being diagnosed, and so forth.
Agents (AAs, PAsand MAs)perform activities
on systemsutilizing services of the Knowledge
Media.In that process they use or consumeresources.It is importantto distinguishactivities
from tasks. Tasks have a goal, whereasactivities don’t. Theyare simplyperceivablepatterns
of action that an agentdoes.
Mediaare different kinds of interfaces, from
paper forms to DIVE.Theseentities are put
together into co-operation and communication
structures on a set of agents (cf. the Amigo
model).
Afirst assessmentof the SoCframeworkis an
ongoingactivity in the COMIC
project [Gustavsson 1993bl.
6. Current Projects
SICSis involved in several planned or ongoing
projects suitable for assessmentsof the SoC
framework.
In a first strand weare implementing
and
testing different test beds and tools. Some
examplesare:
KnowledgeSharlng93
CSCW
applications of Concurrent Engineering
and learning. SICSwill be involvedin several
projects testing CommonKads
ideas together
with industrial partners. Thecommon
setting is
to use and test reusable components,such as
inferencestructures, as sharedobjects in a
COMIC
environment. In the TANGO
project a
prototypeof a Traffic InformationCenteris
developedin a distributed environment.
A distributed environmentfor Agent
Oriented Programming(DAOP)
A testbed for implementationsof distributed
computations.
Distributed KnowledgeBasedSystems
Experiments
in knowledge
sharingandreuse of
services.
Anticipating ManufacturingRobots
Experiments
on adaptiveassembly
lines. Artificial Agents, based on the AOPideas and
Intelligent
Help&Guidance
Support in design environments. Personal
Assistants providinghelp andguidanceare
investigatedin projects with industrial partnets.Modeling communicationpatterns for
designof different public help desks in local
governmentsis an other project.
In the second strandwecontinue our research
¯ on basic principles behind the SoC
framework,i.e.
¯ activity modelsof SoC
¯ modelsof mentalstates for artificial
agents
It is importantto notethat all activities are
within a commonframeworkand thus are run
and evaluated against common
goals. Furthermorethere is a fruitful overlapof personnelin
the differentactivities.
7. References
[Astor, Davidsson, Ekdahl, Gustavssonl Anticipatory Planning, LU-CS-TR’90-69,Dep of
ComputerScience, LundUniversity, 1990.
Also in AdvanceProceedings of the European
Workshopon Planning, 1991.
[Astor, Davidssonand EkdahlJ: Anticipatory
Autonomous Agents, LU-CS-TR:93-12, Dep.
of ComputerScience, LundUniversity, 1993.
(in preparation).
[Covo, Gersht, Kheradpir, Weihmayer]New
Approachesto Resource Management
in Integrated Service BackboneLong Haul Communication Networks, Proceedings IEEENetwork
Operations and ManagementSymposium,
NOMS
"92, Memphis,Tennessee, April 6-9,
1992.
IDavidsson]Concept Acquisition by A utonomousAgents: Cognitive Modelingversus the
Engineering Approach, Lund University
Cognitive Studies 12, 1992.
[Gasser, HuhnslDistributed Artificial
Intelligence VolH. Pitman, London,1989.
[Gustavsson] Mechanismsof Knowledge
Sharing in COMIC.COMIC-SICS-3-1,1993.
99
[Gustavsson 93b] Mechanismsof Interactions
and Interfaces at different levels. COMICS1CS-3-2, 1993.
IJennings, MamdanilUsing Joint Responsibility to CoordinateCollaborative Problem
Solving in DynamicEnvironments. Proc. of
AAAI-92, Morgan Kaufmann 1992.
IJennings, Wittigl ARCHON
Theory and
Practicein DistributedArtificial Intelligence:
Theory and Praxis (Eds Gasser and Avouris),
KluwerAcademicPress, 1992.
I Kinney, Ljungberg, Rao, Tidhar, Wernerand
Sonnenbergl Planned TeamActivity, in Proc.
of the Fourth European Workshopon Modelling AutonomottrAgents in a Multi-Agent
World, MAAMAW’92,
Rome.
I Kirch, Editor] Foundationsof Artificial
Intelligence.Artificial IntelligenceSpecial
Issue, Vol 47 No 1-3, January 1991.
I Laurell NewDirections. Interface Agents:
Metaphorswith Character. The Art of Human
ComputerInterface Design. Addison-Wesley
! 990.
I Malone]Computersupport for organizations:
"lk)wardsan organizational science. In Carroll
(lid.), Interfacing Thought:CognitiveAspects
of HumanComputerInteractions. MITPress,
1987.
I Marmolin,Sundbladl Sharing Knowledgein a
distributed environmentfor collaboration,
COMIC-S ICS/KTH-4-1, 1993.
I Ncches,Fikes, Finin, Gruber, Patil, Senator
and Swartout] Enabling Technology for
KnowledgeSharing, AI Magazine, vol 12, no
3 Fall 1991.
I Pankoke-Babatz,Editor] ComputerBased
Group Communication. The AMIGOActivity
Model, GMD
& Ellis HorwoodLtd, 1989.
IShohamlAgent oriented programming,an
overwievand summaryof recent research,
Proc, Fifth ACMSymposiumon Principles of
DatabaseSystems, 1992.
ISimoudis, Editor] Workshopon: Cooperation
AmongHeterogeneousIntelligent Agents,
AAA!91.
ITan, Weihmayer1992] Integrating AgentOriented Programmingand Planning for
Ctx~perative ProblemSolving, Proceedings
AAAI Workshop on Cooperation among
I leterogeneousIntelligent Systems, Tenth
NationalConferenceon Artificial Intelligence,
San Jose, CA,July 12-17, 1992.
IWeihmeier,Brandau]CooperativeDistributed
Problem Solving for CommunicationNetwork
Management, Computer Communications,
Vol. 13 No.9, pp. 547-557, November1990.
IWeihmayer,Ghaznavi, Sheridan] A Distributed Architecture for Cooperative
Managementof Strategic Communication
Networks, submitted to MILCOM
"93, October
! I - 14, 1993, Boston,MA
[Weihmayer,Tan] ModelingCooperative
Agents for CustomerNetworkControl using
Planning and Agent-Oriented Programming,
Proceedings GLOBECOM
’92, Orlando,
Florida, December6-9, 1992.
[Widerhold]Mediatorsin the architecture of
future information systems, IEEEComputer,
March, 1991.
[Wielinga, Schreiber, Breuker] KADS:A
modelling approach to knowledgeEngineering.
KnowledgeAcquisition, 4(1), 1992, Special
issue ’The KADS
approach to knowledge
engineering’.
100
Appendix
Kads-ll,
CommonKads
Background
TheEsprit project P 5248Kads-ll is a continuationof an earlier Esprit project Kads.I the
later project the Kadsmethodologyfor knowledge acquisition and design of knowledge
bases wasestablished and tested on several
applications.
Thegoal of the Kads-ll project is to extendthe
results of Kads and establish a comprehensive
methodology, CommonKads,for development
of knowledge based systems. CommonKads
is training to be a de facto standard (academic
as well as industrial) at least in Europe.
The Kads-li consortium has the following
members; Cap Gemini Innovation (F), Cap
Programator (S), Netherlands EnergyResearch
Foundation ECN(NL), Eritel SA(E),
France (F), Lloyds Register (UK), Swedish
Institute of ComputerScience (SICS) (S),
Siemens AG(G), Touche Ross Management
Consultants (UK), University of Amsterdam
(NL)and Free University of Brussels (B).
The Kads-ll project ends March31st, 1994.
Issues addressed in Kads-II
ModelsIn KBSdevelopment
The CommonKads
development process is
centered around the production of models
whichfonn the basis of deliverables of a KBSproject, In particular, the modelof expertise,
whichidentifies four types of knowledge,is
central to the CommonKads
approach to knowledge modeling. The expertise modelhas been
partly formalizedandthe results facilitate the
knowledgeanalysis process. At present, the
CommonKads
model set consists of the
following six models
- organization model
- task model
- agent model
- communicationmodel
- expertise model
-design model
Thefirst modelsare knowledgelevel models.
Theyare input to the design model. The output
of the design modelis on the symbol(source)
level.
Library of generic components
Oneof the most powerfulfeatures of the CommonKads
methodologyis a set of generic
knowledgemodelsfor a range of problem
solving tasks. Thesemodelsact as templates
for facilitating knowledgeanalysis. TheCommonKadslibrary also include computational
models.Just as generic modelswill be reusable
analysis models, generic computationalmodels
will be reusable design models.
In Darpa-NSFterms these aspects of the CommonKadsmethodology corresponds to (and
supplements)the efforts in the workinggroups
KnowledgeRepresentation System Specification (KRSS)WGand Shared, Reusable
Knowledge Bases WG.
Project management
support
CommonKads
is based on a risk-driven, result
oriented process model. This modelwill be extendedto take into considerationall the phases
of developmentwhichwere only briefly considered by the original Kadsproject. Theseinclude problemselection, implementationand
maintenance. Additional project management
issues to be addressed by CommonKads
include:
¯ project planning;
¯ cost estimation;
¯ quality assuranceand control.
Integration wlth other conventional ITsystems.
An important feature of CommonKads
is the
bridges to conventional software development
methodswhichare already in widespreaduse.
Theseinclude:
- IE;
- SSADM;
- MERISE;
- YORDON;
- JACKSON.
COMIC- COmputer-based
Mechanismsof Interaction
Cooperative work.
in
Background
P 6225 COMIC
is a Esprit-Ill Basic Research
Actionproject. It is a 3-year project which
started September1st 1992.
COMIC
aims to develop the theories and
techniques necessaryto support the development of future CSCW
systems. These will
be informedby a range of disciplines which
combinean understandingof the nature of
groups with the technologyto support cooperative workwithin a real worldssetting.
101
Theproject involves researchers from both
computerscience and social science backgroundsworkingtogether on a series of
focusedtasks.
The COMIC
consortium consists of: Lancaster
University (UK), Gesellschaft far Mathematik
tmd Dataverarbeitung-GMD(G), Manchester
University (UK), NottinghamUniversity
(UK), Rise National Laboratory (DK),
(S), RoyalInstitute of Technology(S),
University of Milano(1) and Universitat
Politecnica de Catalunya-UPC
(E).
Issues addressedIn COMIC
COMIC
concentrates on developmentof
C :SCWsystems designed to workwithin a realworld context. The project combinesan understanding of workpractice with an investigation
of future technical infrastructures for CSCW,
and to maximizethe effect of the research being
undertaken, the project focuses on four key
research topics in CSCW
systems
development:
¯ the organizational setting of CSCW
systems.
¯ the derivation of requirementsfor the
design and development of CSCW
systems.
The Drive-II programconsists of several
Europeanprojects aimingat a better and safer
utilization of the presenttraffic infrastructure
of Europe. TANGO
is a 3-year project which
started January 1st 1992.
Keyelementsto that purposeis the design
and developmentof interactive systems for
traffic management
and traffic information.
Within the Drive-II programwehave the
Socrates-ll projects aimingat advanced
navigationsupport for different types of
vehicles.
The TANGO
project focuses on models
supportingtraffic predictions and decision
support. An integrated pan of TANGO
is
developmentof reliable planning and replanning modelsfor dynamicnavigation
support. The TANGO
concepts will be
implementedand evaluated at Test Site West
Sweden(ARENA)
in the Gothenburg area.
The TANGO
consortium consists of:
ARENA/NationalBoard of Road
Adminislration-V/tgverket(S), Swedish
Telecom(S), Eritel (S), KMGroup
CelsiusTech (S) Volvo(S), Saab (S),
(S), TFK(S) together with Philips (NL),
Bosch (G) and SEMA
Group (F).
¯ the assessmentand augmentationof
notations to describe and represent
cooperativeactivities.
¯ the development
of novel interaction
mechanisms for CSCW.
Issues widelyrecognizedas being important to
CSCW
research include:
¯ the articulation anddescriptionof
work
¯ the role of shared knowledge
¯ the organizationalsetting of systems
¯ user interaction techniques
¯ multi-disciplinary design and
development
The COMIC
project will address significant
aspects of mostof these issues within its work
package tasks.
TANGO
Background
TANGO,implemented at The Gothenburg
Test Site ARENA,
is a project within the
EuropeanDrive-ll initiative.
102