# Presentation: 542910

## Agent technology Enabling communication among tools and data

**Thomas E. Potok**
**Collaborative Technologies Group Leader**
**Computer Science and Mathematics Division**
**Oak Ridge National Laboratory**

**Mladen Vouk **
**Professor of Computer Science **
**Technical Director of the NC State Center for Advanced Computing and Communications**
**North Carolina State University**

## Agent Technology Trend

**Tim Berners-Lee – “The Semantic Web... will open up the knowledge and workings of humankind to meaningful analysis by software agents, providing a new class of tools by which we can live, work and learn together”**
**“****The Semantic Web” *****Scientific American***** 5/2001**

## Successful Projects

- Knowledge-based Computer Systems Calibration

- Knowledge-based Systems for Constructability

- Neural Nets for Material Mix Optimization

- Knowledge-based Systems - Manufacturing Advisors

- Neural Nets for Spring-back Prediction

- Neural Nets for Resistance. Spot Welding

- Neural Nets for Recovery Boiler Control

- Neural Nets for Bankruptcy  Prediction

- Collaborative Decision Support System

- Genetic Algorithms for Chemical Synthesis

- Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments

- Collaborative Design System

- Manufacturing Emulation Agent System

- Supply Chain Management Agent System

- We have extensive expertise in agent development
- Began working with agent technologies in 1980s

- Over 10 successful projects within the last 5 years
- Collaborations with leading agent experts

- 1985

- 1990

- 1995

- 2000

**VIPAR Knowledge Discovery**

## What are Agents?

**...Software entities that *****assist people and act on their behalf - IBM***
**...Software “robots”**

- Agent
- Technology

- _Goal-driven_
- have a purpose and
- act in accordance with
- that purpose until it is
- fulfilled

- _Communicative_
- able to interact and
- communicate with
- users and other agents

- _Proactive_
- detect changes in their
- environment and react
- to those in a timely manner
- by answering to events
- and initiating actions

- _Autonomous_
- can have control over their own actions and be able to work and launch actions independent of the user or other actors

- _Learning_
- have the ability to
- learn from experiences
- in their environment

- State

- Traditional
- Software Object

- Behavior

## Typical Agent Architecture

- Legacy
- Databases

- Legacy
- Software

- LEARNING
- LAYER

*Typical Agent Architecture*

- OPERATING SYSTEM

- INFRASTRUCTURE (e.g., Java Virtual Machine)

- LOCAL
- MODEL
- (Domain KB,
- Ontologies)

- COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL LAYER
- (Multicast, Directed Communication)

- LINGUISTIC LAYER
- (Message Syntax and Semantics)

- SOCIAL  MODEL
- (Interaction rules, Conversation Management)

- MULTIAGENT APPLICATION
- (Agent-User Interface, Conversation Interface)

- INFERENCE
- ENGINE
- (Decision
- Support
- Models)

- HARDWARE

## Current Agent Funding

**NSF:  **
**Division of Information and Intelligent Systems**
**Division of Electrical and Communications Systems **
**Computation and Social Systems **
**Knowledge and Cognitive Systems **
**Control, Networks, and Computational Intelligence (CNCI)**
**DARPA: **
**Information Technology Office **
**Control of Agent-Based Systems (CoABS)**
**DARPA Agent Mark Up Language (DAML)**
**Taskable Agent Software Kit (TASK)**
**Office of Naval Research:**
** ****Information, Electronics & Surveillance **
**Intelligent Systems**
**Others include:**
**NASA, Army, Air force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, NIST, ...**

## Simple Agent Example

- Agent,
- find me the book
- “War and Peace,”
- and I need it
- tomorrow

- Does the
- agent understand
- buying books?

- Form a plan
- to buy the
- book

- Execute the
- plan

***Amazon***

***Barnes and***
***Nobel***

***B. Dalton***

***Library***

**2 Days**
**$18.50**

**1 Day **
**$21.75**

**1 Day **
**$20.25**

**1 Day **
**Free**

***eBay***

**1 Day **
**$12.50**

- Agent
- Communities

- Dedicated
- Agents

## VIPAR Project – US Pacific Command

** ****Analysts Search 20-30 papers a day**
** ****Manually find the articles on internet**
** ****Manually organizing the articles**

- Inside China

- Russia Today

- Jakarta Post

- NEA

- SEA

- Oceania

**Unorganized**
**Newspaper**
** ****Articles**

**Analysts**

**Organized**
**Results**

## New Intelligent Agent Approach

- Inside China

- Russia Today

- Jakarta Post

**Retrieval**
**Agents**

**Vector Perturbation**
**Clustering**

**“****Knowledge**
**Bins”**

- Economy

- Military

- Political

**Analysts**

**Intelligent Agent**

## Oak Ridge Mobile Agent Community (ORMAC)

- Machine A

- Machine B

- Agent Host X

- Agent Host Y

- Agent Host Z

- Agent Context

- Agent 1

- Agent Context

- Agent 2

- Agent Context

- Agent 3

- Communication

**Allows agents to be transmitted and received among machines. **
**Agents can also interact with systems and agents that are not part of the community. **
**Agents  uses the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA) compliant agent control language (ACL) messages. **

## VIPAR Architecture

- Ontologies

- Multi-agent System Built on
- ORMAC Framework

- Dynamic Vector
- Space Models

- Conversion from
- HTML to XML

## Clustering: A Simple Example

**2. Terms Dictionary**

**1. Original and Parsed Documents**

**7. Phylips tree representation**

**3. Vector Space Model**

**4. Document Similarity**

**6. Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering**

- Agglomerative

- Divisive

- 1

- 2

- 3

- 4

- 6

- 7

- 8

**5. Euclidean Distance**

## VIPAR Knowledge Management Same result, easier to “see”

- Wen Ho Lee
- Wen Ho Lee Spends First Day Savoring Home Delights
- Clinton Calls For Review Of Lee Secrets Case
- Clinton Concerned Over Lee Case - Reno On Defensive
- Asian-Americans Demand White House Action on Lee
- Lee Case Points up Scientists' Attitude on Security
- India and Pakistan
- India and Pakistan: Troubled relations
- Troops die in Kashmir clashes
- IAEA Meeting
- IAEA Supports Putin Nuclear Power Initiative
- China Rejects Moves to Tighten Regulation of Nuclear Materials
- U.S. China Trade
- U.S. China Trade Vote Milestone on Rocky Road

- 1

- 2

- 3

- 4

- 5

- 6

- 7

- 8

- 9

- 10

- Wen Ho Lee

- India/Pakistan

- IAEA Meeting

- US China Trade

## Endorsements

**US Pacific Command’s CINC Admiral Blair**
**“****A tremendously successful project”**
**“****Software agents ... lead to substantially improved analytical products.”**
**US Pacific Command’s Science and Technology Advisor**
**“****hit a grand slam home run!”**
**“****first time we've seen information discovery and knowledge management software working here at HQ USCINCPAC operationally.”**

## How agents can work for scientific data

## Astrophysics simulation of temperature and tangential velocities

- Visualization created by Ross Toedte

## Hypothetical Scenario

- Astrophysics
- Simulation

- Probe

- Dynamic
- Clustering

- HPSS

- MPI-IO

*Full *
*Data*

*Reduced *
*Data*

*Clustered*
*Data*

- Stripe
- Analysis

- Astrophysics
- Data
- Agent

- Clustering
- Agent

- Binning
- Sampling

- Data
- Reduction
- Agent

- Parallel
- IO Agent

- Storage
- Agent

## Example

**A1: REQUEST All:** Dimensionality Reduction **FORMAT:** HDF5 XML **TYPE:** Climate
**A2: REPLY A1**: Dimensionality Reduction  **FORMAT**: HDF5 **TYPE**: General
**A3: REPLY A1**: Dimensionality Reduction  **FORMAT**: ASCII **TYPE**: Physics
- A1: **REQUEST** All: Conversion **FORMAT**: HDF5 XML to HDF5 **TYPE**: any
- A4: **REPLY** A1: Conversion **FORMAT**: HDF5 XML to HDF5 **TYPE**: Nuclear
- A5: **REPLY** A1: Conversion **FORMAT**: HDF5 XML to HDF4 XML **TYPE**: any
**A1: PERFORM A4:** Conversion **FORMAT**: HDF5 XML to HDF5 **DATA: **D1
- A4: **RESULT** A1: Conversion **FORMAT**: HDF5 XML to HDF5 **Data: **R1
**A1: PERFORM A2:** Dimensionality Reduction **FORMAT:** HDF5 **Data: **R1
**A2: RESULTS A1**: Dimensionality Reduction  **FORMAT**: HDF5 **Data: **R2

- Scientist: What if we reduce the data?

- Agent whiteboard

- SDM Agent Community

- A1

- A2

- A3

- A4

- A5

## Year 1 Deliverables

**Generic scientific data ontology **
**Current framework supports a standard FIPA message ACL**
**Need for agents to be able understand and interact with scientific data**
**Data centric?**
**Tool centric?**
**Analysis centric?**

## Year 1 Deliverables continued

**Generic data and model agents for data mining and discovery of access patterns**
**Define general case agents that can be adapted to work with **
**Specific data types**
**Specific tools**
**Establish network-based software configuration, management and distribution site**

## Summary

**Intelligent agents are a significant future technology direction**
**We have a significant progression of deployed agent systems and research to our credit**
**We have ringing endorsements regarding the success of our systems and research**
**We look forward to the next steps...**

## Slide 22

## How to use agents?

**We do not what to redo what you have already done!!!**
**We want to supply the data communication protocols  so that scientists can use your tools more effectively**
**Java based, FIPA compliant**