DAI-List Digest Thursday, 7 May 1992 Issue Number 78 Topics: Request for Contract Net Code CFP for GWAI-92 Workshop on Collaborative Work New DAI publication Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Lim D S N Date: Mon, 4 May 92 10:38:01 BST Subject: Request for Code for Contract Net Dear DAI-List Subscribers: I have made enquiries to both Randall Davis and Reid Smith in regards to their implementation of the Contract Net Protocol. My purpose is to subject the framework to perform certain experiments like Distributed Sensing. However, they no longer possess the original code of the CNET. Do any of you have or know of any existence of this source code (written in Interlisp or Lisp)? Thank you. David Lim 9-2 Eddington Tower University of Essex Colchester CO4 3UG UK ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Donald Steiner Subject: Workshop call Date: Thu, 7 May 92 7:33:59 GMT Supporting Collaborative Work Between Human Experts and Intelligent Cooperative Information Systems A workshop to be held as part of GWAI'92 Aug. 31 - Sep. 4, 1992 Bonn, Germany An increasingly important area of research is that of Intelligent Cooperative Information Systems (ICIS), which are characterised by large numbers of "agents" with significant intelligence distributed over large computer/communications networks. In such environments, tasks are defined by one or more agents, and are executed by groups of problem solvers acting autonomously, cooperatively, or collaboratively, depending upon the requirements of the problem under consideration. This perspective includes the need to efficiently and transparently use all computing resources (e.g., processing, knowledge, and data) that are available over a network (cf. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON INTELLIGENT AND COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS). Work on ICIS is supported by research in the fields of Distributed / Federated Databases, Artificial Intelligence, and Distributed AI on the one hand, and in the areas of Office Information Systems, Distributed Decision Support, and CSCW on the other. However, with regard to collaboration between human experts and ICISs, some important shortcomings must be recognized. We still lack the capabilities to effectively support human experts working together with ICISs. We do not even clearly know what the requirements are for supporting interaction of experts with ICISs! Relevant topics of interest under consideration are: o Explanation facilities helping humans understand network-wide processes of cooperative problem solving o Tools and techniques enabling users to "discover" useful knowledge provided by remote knowledge based systems o Facilities reducing the restrictions arising from the a priori autonomy (e.g., in design and implementation) of the agents being integrated in an ICIS o Coordination mechanisms discovering / avoiding harmful interdependencies between the interactions among different (a priori independent) ICIS users or between a user-ICIS dialog and the ICIS-internal cooperative problem solving o Architectures of (intelligent) human-computer-interfaces to ICIS On the other hand, investigations are required into limitations that the special characteristics of ICIS impose upon user-ICIS collaboration. Some important topics in this area are: o Possibilities / limitations of distributed knowledge base updates o Control of user access to (parts of) knowledge bases (access rights, concurrency control) o Interfaces to knowledge bases providing remote users / other software agents with facilities for evaluating the contents of the local knowledge base (independent from the standard interface to the local system) o Handling / scheduling of a user's dialog with remote knowledge based systems made necessary by the interactive style of problem solving used by an agent working on the user's request. We would like to address the above mentioned issues in a workshop to take place as part of the "German Workshop on AI'92" (GWAI'92). Participants of the workshop will present current research in the relevant areas. Further, during the workshop we would like the participants to target a specific problem (to be circulated preceding the workshop) and analyse it with regard to a view towards its solutions. The results of the workshop will then be made available to the ICIS, AI, and CSCW communities. Participation to the workshop will be by invitation (based on submission of papers to the program committee). Pre-proceedings will be available at the workshop. Depending on the quality of submissions, a subsequent book publication is intended. Unpublished full papers (up to 5000 words / 10 pages) are invited which address the topics listed above (related subjects may be addressed as well). Theoretical, empirical and applied research will be considered. Papers are to be submitted by June 15th, 1992 (email preferred). Each paper will be considered by at least two referees. Notification of acceptance will occur by July 15th. To be included in the pre-proceedings, the final version (incorporating reviewer feedback) should be received by August 15th, 1992. The workshop will take place as part of GWAI'92 during August 31 - September 4, 1992 in Bonn, Germany. Please note: Workshop attendance also requires registering for GWAI. Submission of papers as well as any further communications should be directed to the contact person, Dr. Stefan Kirn. Contact ------- Dr. Stefan Kirn FernUniversitaet Hagen Praktische Informatik I Postfach 940 D-5800 Hagen-1 Tel: +49 2331 987 2726 (Kirn) +49 2331 987 311 (secretary) Fax: +49 2331 987 314 email: kirn@fernuni-hagen.de Program Committee ----------------- Stefan Kirn, FernUniversitaet Hagen, Germany, kirn@fernuni-hagen.de Mike Papazoglou, Queensland Univ. of Technology, Australia, mikep@snow.fit.qut.edu.au Donald Steiner, Siemens AG, Germany, steiner@dfki.uni-kl.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1992 14:58 CET From: THIES WITTIG ATLAS ELEKTRONIK GMBH Subject: New DAI publication Advance information for a new title in the ELLIS HORWOOD SERIES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARCHON An Architecture for Multi-Agent Systems Editor: Thies Wittig, Atlas Elektronik, Bremen, Germany This book provides a synthesis of all the diverse strands of work undertaken by the ESPRIT Project ARCHON. ARCHON is a large consortium involving 14 organizations investigating the development of a framework for cooperation among industrial supervision and control systems for large and often distributed applications in order to increase efficiency and reliability. One application of ARCHON is electricity distribution and the book describes two demonstration systems of this which are currently under construction. This book is timely and up-to-date and provides an excellent review of this increasingly important field. Contents: Readership: 1. Introduction Researchers and development 2. The Problem Definition and workers in artificial intel- the Functional Architecture ligence, industrial control, 3. The DAI Functionality of the and distributed systems, Architecture including engineers in proc- 4. The Communications Function- ess control and software ality of the Architecture system design. 5. The Information Modelling within the Architecture 6. The HCI Requirements and components for the Architecture 7. An Implementation using Blackboards 8. The Application Demonstrators approx. 139 pages, cloth, 0-13-044462-6 approx. $67.95, due April 1992 This book is available from all good booksellers or from Simon & Schuster International: Department LM Simon & Schuster International Group Campus 400 Maylands Avenue Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 7EZ England Phone orders: +44-442-881900 Fax orders: +44-442-882099