The Virtual Secretary 2 project (ViSe2) focuses on the construction of a multi-agent cooperation system. As a research vehicle, we have chosen to build intelligent agents that perform secretarial tasks for their users either by themselves or via cooperation. An individual ViSe2 agent has limited

This paper provides a theoretical framework for analysis of consensus algorithms for multi-agent networked systems with an emphasis on the role of directed information flow, robustness to changes in network topology due to link/node failures, time-delays, and performance guarantees. An overview

This paper presents a methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. The methodology is general, in that it is applicable to a wide range of multi-agent systems, and comprehensive, in that it deals with both the macro-level (societal) and the micro-level (agent) aspects of systems

Intelligent human agents exist in a cooperative social environment that facilitates learning. They learn not only by trialand -error, but also through cooperation by sharing instantaneous information, episodic experience, and learned knowledge. The key investigations of this paper are, "

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total sales. The values of many of these cells are dependent on the values of other cells in the data cube..A common and powerful query optimization technique is to materialize some or all of these cells rather than compute them from raw data each time. Commercial systems differ mainly in their approach

This paper provides an overview of research and development activities in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. It aims to identify key concepts and applications, and to indicate how they relate to one-another. Some historical context to the field of agent-based computing

In tree-based multicast systems, a relatively small number of interior nodes carry the load of forwarding multicast messages. This works well when the interior nodes are highly available, d d cated infrastructure routers but it poses a problem for application-level multicast in peer-to-peer systems

for costly punishment causes a large increase in cooperation levels because potential free riders face a credible threat. We show, in particular, that in the presence of a costly punishment opportunity almost complete cooperation can be achieved and maintained although, under the standard assumptions

Performance modelling is concerned with the capture and analysis of the dynamic behaviour of computer and communication systems. The size and complexity of many modern systems result in large, complex models. A compositional approach decomposes the system into subsystems that are smaller and more