New NetLogo Models

This semester's multiagent systems' class, while small, has led to the development of a lot of interesting and fun NetLogo models. I have posted a few of them in my MAS Netlogo page. The Sodoku puzzle using distributed breakout is especially fun.

B2B Workflows and Characteristc Form Games

Hrishi will be presenting a paper this weekend on his work on workflow automation using multiagent systems. The paper is:

• Hrishikesh Goradia. Towards B2B Automation Via Coalition Formation Among Service Agents. In Proceedings of the IBM PhD Symposium at the Fourth International Conference on Service Oriented Computing, p. 43--48, 2006.

Research Summary Slides

I have posted a copy of my slides for this Friday's Seven Minute Madness (2:30pm in 300 Main Street, B213). They provide a pithy summary of what we are doing now.

Research Opportunities for Undergraduates or Graduates

I have a couple of programming projects which are a great way to get started learning about multiagent systems and would look great in your resume. Note that these are not paid positions, but you could get credit for them as a directed study if you want. Graduate students might also be interested as a way to get a flavor of what we do.

1. I am writing a multiagent systems' textbook which includes a lot of sample programs written in NetLogo. I already have a some programs but I need a bunch more. If you are interested in writing some, let me know. NetLogo is easy to learn and tons of fun to use. It is an agent-based modeling language that can be used in a surprinsingly large set of domain areas such as physics, economics, sociology, chemistry, biology, and many others.
2. I am interested in developing an Ajax social bookmarking application for academic publications, like citeulike but with support for ontologies and automated recommendations.
3. I am also interested in developing an Ajax system for distributed combinatorial auctions using some of the algorithms we have developed--available from my list of publications.

Pausebid Poster

I have finished my pausebid poster for the workshop. I found out that it is not easy to explain how an algorithm works on a poster! It seems there is no substitute for staring and thinking about it, drawing all kinds of pictures to get a feel for how it works. Also, in related news, Benito is already working on a faster version of the algorithm which is coming along really well.

Summer 2006 Papers: AAAI

Hong and I managed to get papers admitted to AAAI workshops. We will be presenting them at the conference in Boston. They are

• Hong Jiang and José M. Vidal. From Rational to Emotional Agents. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Agent-based Social Simulation, 2006.
• José M. Vidal. Multiagent Coordination Using a Distributed Combinatorial Auction. In AAAI Workshop on Auction Mechanism for Robot Coordination, July; 2006.

Spring 2006 Papers

We have a revised version of Murali's paper, who we are sorry to say left us for a high-paying job at Microsoft, and a new paper on emotional agents.

• Muralidhar V. Narumanchi and José M. Vidal. Algorithms for Distributed Winner Determination In Combinatorial Auctions. In LNAI volume of AMEC/TADA, Springer. 2006
• Hong Jiang, José M. Vidal, and Michael N. Huhns. Incorporating Emotions into Automated Negotiation. In Proceedings of the Agent Construction and Emotions Workshop, 2006

Also, we have new models in our MAS NetLogo models page and our MAS Reading Group has been very busy this Spring, drop by if you are interested.