2nd IEEE / ECLA / IFIP International Conference
on
Architectures and Design Methods for

BALANCED AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

Technology for Supporting Multi-Agent Coordination

Mark Klein, PhD
Boeing Computer Services
Mailstop 7L-41
PO Box 24346
Seattle WA 98124-0346 USA

Tel: (206) 865-3412
Fax: (206) 865-2965
Email:

Objectives

The objective of this tutorial is to critically review the current state of the art of computer-based coordination support technology, and help participants better understand the key challenges and emerging solutions that are being identified by artificial intelligence and related fields.

Content

This tutorial will examine the three main classes of technology that have emerged to address coordination challenges in collaborative work settings: process management, rationale capture and conflict management technology. We will review the problems they are designed for, their functionality (e.g. using software demos and video segments), commercial availability and current weaknesses. The key future challenges and emerging solutions for these technologies will be identified from the perspective of basic research on coordination undertaken in distributed artificial intelligence and related fields. (See tutorial outline below for more detail).

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for researchers, advanced developers and technical managers interested in understanding how coordination technology is likely to evolve in the near to mid-term future.

About The Instructor

My research background is in the area of artificial intelligence based support for cooperative problem solving, with a focus on collaborative design and concurrent engineering. In the past five years I have published over 20 journal articles, conference papers and book chapters on these topics. I have also developed several major systems for conflict management, design rationale capture and workflow management.

My research experience has encompassed both academic (University of Illinois) and industrial research settings in the US (Boeing) and Japan (Hitachi). I have had the opportunity to focus on both long term research issues as well as large-scale real-world requirements in large corporations.

My job at Boeing has also included a large technology transfer component which has required me to become aware of the state of the art of a wide range of technologies related to manufacturing information systems (including rationale capture, project management, process modelling and analysis as well as workflow execution), identify how they can best be used as well as what gaps in the state of the art need to be addressed by research to meet large-scale industrial requirements.

My professional activities include chairing three international workshops (including the 1994 Distributed AI workshop), invited talks on several continents and guest editing a special issue on conflict management.

Equipment Needed

Ideally, I would like to present the slides from a Macintosh computer with a projected display. Otherwise I will use an overhead projector. I also need an NTSC video player.

Tutorial Outline

Section 1: Why Do We Need Coordination Technologies?

* how increasing coordination complexity in large scale collaborative work is overwhelming current (mainly manual) approaches, leading to severe impacts on cost, quality and schedule

Section 2: The Types of Coordination Technology

* the three ways activities can be distributed
* the three corresponding kinds of coordination technology

Section 3: Process Management Technology

* definition
* functions: modelling (process modelling, project management, IDEF, simulation etc) & enactment (messaging, structured conversations, contract net, workflow)
* why is this technology important: adherence, tracking, comparison with current manual approaches in industry
* commercial & research start of the art
* examples of working systems: FORMTEK, Linkage, In Concert ...
* challenges - organizational modelling, task assignment, exception handling, semi-specified processes

Section 4: Rationale Capture Technology

* definition
* functions: representation (link languages), acquisition (user interfaces & inference systems) & services (retrieval, truth maintenance, what-if trade studies ...)
* why is this technology important: reuse, comparison with current manual approaches in industry
* commercial & research start of the art
* examples of working systems: video tape - IBIS, RDD, JANUS, DRCS ...
* challenges: naturalness, expressiveness, acquisition burden

Section 5: Conflict Management Technology

* definition
* functions: conflict avoidance, detection, resolution
* why is this technology important: reduced rework, faster & better
decisions, comparison with current manual approaches in industry
* commercial & research start of the art
* examples of working systems: COSMOS, Negotiator ...
* challenges: tractability, capturing prescriptive dependencies, acquiring and representing conflict resolution expertise ...

Section 6: Future Challenges

* integrating coordination technologies around an inclusive dependency language
* socialized computational agents: social protocol standards ("KQML++") etc.

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	Before 15 April	After 15 April
TUTORIAL FEE:	12 000 PTE [80 US$]	15 000 PTE [100 US$]

Including hand-outs and coffee break

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