Expert systems and economic policy analysis: An application to OCS auction leasing

In this paper we argue that expert systems can be powerful tools for modelling microeconomic systems, including both individual decision making and the coordination of individual agents in a resource allocation mechanism. Using the fact that expert systems are essentially computerized versions of decision processes, we illustrate how they can be viewed as generalized process models of decision-making. We argue that the expert system approach is beneficial because it allows a policy analyst to explore the implication of policy alternatives without having to incur the generally prohibitive cost of field implementation studies. Further, enables the incorporation and updating of decision strategies and qualitative information, which human experts typically use but which is not amenable to pure mathematical modelling.One particular microeconomic system we suggest could be modelled as an expert system is the OCS offshore oil lease auction process. Moreover, we argue that constructing such an expert system model would require the development of two integrated expert systems: one for the auction process and subsequent resource allocation and the other to model the individual bidding behavior of the auction participants. We set out the structure of the auction expert system in some detail and discuss rules of thumb used by bidders inferred from our empirical research on past OCS auctions.Such an expert system of an auction leasing process could provide benefits to both bidders (e.g., oil companies) and the auctioneer (e.g., the Department of the Interior) as well. Bidders, by trying different strategies against different hypothesized strategies by their opponents could use such an integrated expert system to improve their bidding performances. The auctioneer, on the other hand, could test the efficiency of various proposed auction institutions under different assumptions about bidding behavior. In some circumstances, it might be desirable to even automate the auction process with a network coordinating the expert systems used by the individual firms and a computerized auctioneer.     

Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems

The current practice in multiagent systems typically associates the environment with resources that are external to agents and their communication infrastructure. Advanced uses of the environment include infrastructures for indirect coordination, such as digital pheromones, or support for governed interaction in electronic institutions. Yet, in general, the notion of environment is not well defined. Functionalities of the environment are often dealt with implicitly or in an ad hoc manner. This is not only poor engineering practice, it also hinders engineers to exploit the full potential of the environment in multiagent systems. In this paper, we put forward the environment as an explicit part of multiagent systems.We give a definition stating that the environment in a multiagent system is a first-class abstraction with dual roles: (1) the environment provides the surrounding conditions for agents to exist, which implies that the environment is an essential part of every multiagent system, and (2) the environment provides an exploitable design abstraction for building multiagent system applications. We discuss the responsibilities of such an environment in multiagent systems and we present a reference model for the environment that can serve as a basis for environment engineering. To illustrate the power of the environment as a design abstraction, we show how the environment is successfully exploited in a real world application. Considering the environment as a first-class abstraction in multiagent systems opens up new horizons for research and development in multiagent systems.     

Genetic fuzzy systems to evolve interaction strategies in multiagent systems

This article suggests an evolutionary approach to designing interaction strategies for multiagent systems, focusing on strategies modeled as fuzzy rule‐based systems. The aim is to learn models evolving database and rule bases to improve agent performance when playing in a competitive environment. In competitive situations, data for learning and tuning are rare, and rule bases must jointly evolve with the databases. We introduce an evolutionary algorithm whose operators use variable length chromosomes, a hierarchical relationship among individuals through fitness, and a scheme that successively explores and exploits the search space along generations. Evolution of interaction strategies uncovers unknown and unexpected agent behaviors and allows a richer analysis of negotiation mechanisms and their role as a coordination protocol. An application concerning an electricity market illustrates the effectiveness of the approach. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 971–991, 2007.     

TRAMMAS: A tracing model for multiagent systems

Agent's flexibility and autonomy, as well as their capacity to coordinate and cooperate, are some of the features which make multiagent systems useful to work in dynamic and distributed environments. These key features are directly related to the way in which agents communicate and perceive each other, as well as their environment and surrounding conditions. Traditionally, this has been accomplished by means of message exchange or by using blackboard systems. These traditional methods have the advantages of being easy to implement and well supported by multiagent platforms; however, their main disadvantage is that the amount of social knowledge in the system directly depends on every agent actively informing of what it is doing, thinking, perceiving, etc. There are domains, for example those where social knowledge depends on highly distributed pieces of data provided by many different agents, in which such traditional methods can produce a great deal of overhead, hence reducing the scalability, efficiency and flexibility of the multiagent system. This work proposes the use of event tracing in multiagent systems, as an indirect interaction and coordination mechanism to improve the amount and quality of the information that agents can perceive from both their physical and social environment, in order to fulfill their goals more efficiently. In order to do so, this work presents an abstract model of a tracing system and an architectural design of such model, which can be incorporated to a typical multiagent platform.     

Finite-time coordination in multiagent systems using sliding mode control approach

Finite-time stability in dynamical systems theory involves systems whose trajectories converge to an equilibrium state in finite time. In this paper, we use the notion of finite-time stability to apply it to the problem of coordinated motion in multiagent systems. Specifically, we consider a group of agents described by fully actuated Euler–Lagrange dynamics along with a leader agent with an objective to reach and maintain a desired formation characterized by steady-state distances between the neighboring agents in finite time. We use graph theoretic notions to characterize communication topology in the network determined by the information flow directions and captured by the graph Laplacian matrix. Furthermore, using sliding mode control approach, we design decentralized control inputs for individual agents that use only data from the neighboring agents which directly communicate their state information to the current agent in order to drive the current agent to the desired steady state. Sliding mode control is known to drive the system states to the sliding surface in finite time. The key feature of our approach is in the design of non-smooth sliding surfaces such that, while on the sliding surface, the error states converge to the origin in finite time, thus ensuring finite-time coordination among the agents in the network. In addition, we discuss the case of switching communication topologies in multiagent systems. Finally, we show the efficacy of our theoretical results using an example of a multiagent system involving planar double integrator agents.     

An evolutionary approach to deception in multi-agent systems

Understanding issues of trust and deception are key to designing robust, reliable multi-agent systems. This paper builds on previous work which examined the use of auctions as a model for exploring the concept of deception in such systems. We have previously described two forms of deceptive behaviour which can occur in a simulated repeated English auction. The first of these types of deception involves sniping or late bidding, which not only allows an agent to conceal its true valuation for an item, but also potentially allows it to win an item for which it may not possess the highest valuation. The second deceptive strategy involves the placing of false bids which are designed to reduce an opponent’s potential profit. In this work we examine the potential shortcomings of those two strategies and investigate whether or not their individual strengths can be combined to produce a successful hybrid deceptive strategy.     

多代理系统下的主动配电网故障恢复博弈策略

在保障主动配电网可靠恢复前提下,为实现供电侧与用户侧利益均衡,本文提出了多代理系统(multiagent system,MAS)下的主动配电网故障恢复博弈策略.为充分考虑电网和电力用户对故障恢复的决策影响,设计了由电网代理、用户总代理和协调代理构成的MAS,建立了MAS信息传输模型.然后,构建了供电侧和用户侧在故障恢复中的利益函数、恢复策略空间,以及以电网代理和用户总代理作为参与人的合作博弈恢复模型.电网代理和用户总代理分别以改进的蚁群算法和统计方法进行分布并行计算,协调代理以双方共同的利益函数作为寻优目标通过迭代算法求得满足纳什均衡的恢复策略.本文以IEEE69节点模型为例,分别对单故障和连锁故障恢复情景求解,验证了本文所提策略的有效性.     

Multi-Agent System Development Based on Organizations

Organizational models have been recently used in agent theory for modeling coordination in open systems and to ensure social order in multi-agent system applications. In this paper, we propose the employment of Organization Theory for the analysis and design of multiagent systems. Thus, we first discuss the current state of the art of organization-oriented multiagent system methods, placing emphasis on their organizational features. We also review human organizational structures, and we propose several guidelines for implementing agent organizations by means of Organization Theory. Our final aim is to employ well-known human organizational structures to develop multiagent systems.     

Co-evolution-based mechanism design for sponsored search advertising

Sponsored search advertising (SSA), the primary revenue source of Web search engine companies, has become the dominant form of online advertising. Search engine companies, such as Google and Baidu, are naturally interested in SSA mechanism design with the aim to improve the overall effectiveness and profitability of SSA ecosystems. Due to model intractability, however, traditional game theory and mechanism design frameworks provide only limited help as to the design and evaluation of practical SSA mechanisms. In this paper, we propose a niche-based co-evolutionary simulation approach, aiming at computationally evaluating SSA auction mechanisms based on advertisers’ equilibrium bidding behavior generated through co-evolution of their bidding strategies. Using this approach, we evaluate and compare key performance measures of several practical SSA auction mechanisms, including the generalized first and second price auction, the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism, and a novel hybrid mechanism adopted by sogou.com, a major search engine in China.     

Adaptive architectures for resilient control of networked multiagent systems in the presence of misbehaving agents

Control algorithms of networked multiagent systems are generally computed distributively without having a centralised entity monitoring the activity of agents; and therefore, unforeseen adverse conditions such as uncertainties or attacks to the communication network and/or failure of agent-wise components can easily result in system instability and prohibit the accomplishment of system-level objectives. In this paper, we study resilient coordination of networked multiagent systems in the presence of misbehaving agents, i.e. agents that are subject to exogenous disturbances that represent a class of adverse conditions. In particular, a distributed adaptive control architecture is presented for directed and time-varying graph topologies to retrieve a desired networked multiagent system behaviour. Apart from the existing relevant literature that make specific assumptions on the graph topology and/or the fraction of misbehaving agents, we show that the considered class of adverse conditions can be mitigated by the proposed adaptive control approach that utilises a local state emulator – even if all agents are misbehaving. Illustrative numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the theoretical findings.     

Multiagent System Simulations of Treasury Auctions

This study uses a multiagent system to determine which payment rule provides the most revenue in treasury auctions. The agents learn how to bid using straightforward bid adjustment rules that are based on impulse balance learning. The market model encompasses the when-issued, auction, and secondary markets, as well as bidding constraints for primary dealers. I find that when the number of primary bidders is less than 13 (Canada) the Discriminatory payment rule is revenue superior to the Uniform payment across most market price spreads. When the number of primary bidders is greater than 14 (United States), Uniform payment is revenue superior to Discriminatory payment for all market price spreads. In general, revenue increases with the minimum bid constraint and with the number of primary dealers for Uniform, Average, and Vickrey payment rules.      

Learning to Improve Coordinated Actions in Cooperative Distributed Problem-Solving Environments

Coordination is an essential technique in cooperative, distributed multiagent systems. However, sophisticated coordination strategies are not always cost-effective in all problem-solving situations. This paper presents a learning method to identify what information will improve coordination in specific problem-solving situations. Learning is accomplished by recording and analyzing traces of inferences after problem solving. The analysis identifies situations where inappropriate coordination strategies caused redundant activities, or the lack of timely execution of important activities, thus degrading system performance. To remedy this problem, situation-specific control rules are created which acquire additional nonlocal information about activities in the agent networks and then select another plan or another scheduling strategy. Examples from a real distributed problem-solving application involving diagnosis of a local area network are described.     

Opportunities for multiagent systems and multiagent reinforcement learning in traffic control

The increasing demand for mobility in our society poses various challenges to traffic engineering, computer science in general, and artificial intelligence and multiagent systems in particular. As it is often the case, it is not possible to provide additional capacity, so that a more efficient use of the available transportation infrastructure is necessary. This relates closely to multiagent systems as many problems in traffic management and control are inherently distributed. Also, many actors in a transportation system fit very well the concept of autonomous agents: the driver, the pedestrian, the traffic expert; in some cases, also the intersection and the traffic signal controller can be regarded as an autonomous agent. However, the “agentification” of a transportation system is associated with some challenging issues: the number of agents is high, typically agents are highly adaptive, they react to changes in the environment at individual level but cause an unpredictable collective pattern, and act in a highly coupled environment. Therefore, this domain poses many challenges for standard techniques from multiagent systems such as coordination and learning. This paper has two main objectives: (i) to present problems, methods, approaches and practices in traffic engineering (especially regarding traffic signal control); and (ii) to highlight open problems and challenges so that future research in multiagent systems can address them.     

Consensus of multiagent systems based on disturbance observer

The objectives of this work are the development and design of disturbance observers (DO’s) for a team of agents that accomplish consensus on agents’ states in the presence of exogenous disturbances. A pinning control strategy is designed for a part of agents of the multiagent systems without disturbances, and this pinning control can bring multiple agents’ states to reaching an expected consensus value. Under the effect of the disturbances, nonlinear disturbance observers are developed for disturbances generated by an exogenous system to estimate the disturbances. Asymptotical consensus of the multiagent systems with disturbances under the composite controller can be achieved. Finally, by applying an example of multiagent systems with switching topologies and exogenous disturbances, the design of the parameters of DO’s are illuminated.     

Goal and predictive coordination in two level hierarchical systems

The multilevel system theory applies two general methods of coordination, which influences the manner of subsystem management—goal and predictive coordinations. Both these general types of coordination perform multiple data transfer between the hierarchical levels and delay the evaluation and implementation of a global optimal solution of a control problem. The paper demonstrates a coordination policy, which decreases the information transfer in the hierarchical system, titled “noniterative” coordination. The last is developed both for goal and predictive coordination strategies. The mathematical foundations of these two noniterative coordination strategies are presented. Comparative analysis is performed to identify peculiarities and drawbacks for the real time management of two level hierarchical systems. Assessment of the computational workload and speed of the coordination, expressed as “flops” numbers is done for the case of nonlinear optimization problems. Both the noniterative coordination strategies benefit the real time operation in the multilevel system by reducing the iterative computations and the data transfer between the hierarchical levels. The predictive coordination has potential in speeding the management process and resource allocation, due to the decomposition approach, which is applied.     

Approximately adaptive neural cooperative control for nonlinear multiagent systems with performance guarantee

This paper studies the cooperative control problem for a class of multiagent dynamical systems with partially unknown nonlinear system dynamics. In particular, the control objective is to solve the state consensus problem for multiagent systems based on the minimisation of certain cost functions for individual agents. Under the assumption that there exist admissible cooperative controls for such class of multiagent systems, the formulated problem is solved through finding the optimal cooperative control using the approximate dynamic programming and reinforcement learning approach. With the aid of neural network parameterisation and online adaptive learning, our method renders a practically implementable approximately adaptive neural cooperative control for multiagent systems. Specifically, based on the Bellman's principle of optimality, the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equation for multiagent systems is first derived. We then propose an approximately adaptive policy iteration algorithm for multiagent cooperative control based on neural network approximation of the value functions. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is rigorously proved using the contraction mapping method. The simulation results are included to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

多智能体系统动态协调与分布式控制设计

多智能体系统的主要研究目的在于探索由个体之间的相互作用所产生的群体协调现象的内在机制和原理,而控制或反馈在多智能体协调运动中起着至关重要的作用．本文集中讨论了多智能体协调研究中的几个新兴的基本问题,包括输出调节、集合协调和覆盖．文中着重介绍了分布式估计和内模原理两种多智能体系统分布式输出调节方法及相关的研究进展：关于多智能体系统的目标集合协调,本文从集合聚集和集合优化两方面做了详尽论述：多智能体覆盖有多种分类方式,从覆盖对象的特征出发可将其划分为区域覆盖、边界覆盖和动态目标覆盖3种类型,并对它们的研究背景和最新成果予以介绍．另外文章还对多智能体系统协调控制的理论和应用研究进行了展望．     

Coordination of multiagent systems through explicit valuation of action

The effectiveness of a system relates to its ability to fulfill its functional requirements. When a system consists of a set of collaborating agents, the overall performance may depend more on their ability to work together than on optimizing individual behavior. In fact, the goal of an agent is often at odds with the interest of the collective. The limitations of centralized control for complex systems suggest the need for decentralized coordination. This can be achieved by having each agent take explicit account of the cost of engaging in an activity as well as a measure of reward for effective behavior. The consideration of payoffs and penalties leads to an economic perspective of multiagent systems. In consequence, it is possible to draw on previous work in diverse fields, ranging from game theory to welfare economics and social policy. The promise and limitations of the explicit valuation approach are examined. To illustrate, the behavior of collaborative systems can be interpreted in terms of games of strategy; this approach permits a better understanding of the conditions for globally optimal behavior, as well as strategies for their attainment. The notions of agents and explicit valuation of action are versatile concepts. One indication of the versatility lies in the fact that these concepts cover as a special case the idea of genetic algorithms as a mechanism for learning systems.     

A Markovian jump system approach to consensus of heterogeneous multiagent systems with partially unknown and uncertain attack strategies

The problem of robust leader‐following consensus of heterogeneous multiagent systems subject to deny‐of‐service attacks is investigated, where attack strategies are partially unknown and uncertain to defender. A Markovian jump system approach is proposed, that is, capable of describing the occurrence of different attack strategies, and the occurring probability of each attack strategy is represented by the transition probability of the Markovian jump model. Then, sufficient conditions are derived such that the output tracking performance can be guaranteed. In order to design the controller gains, some slack matrices are introduced, which can provide some design freedom. Finally, it is shown that the controller design results can be applied to the multivehicle position‐tracking system. The simulation results reveal that the consensus performance is much better if one has more statistics information on attacks.