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Conflicts and Negotiations
in Single Function Agent Based
Design Systems
by
Ilan Berker
Abstract:
Design is a very complicated and ill-defined problem solving activity.
Routine parametric design is a more restricted and well-defined version of
design problems. Even this restricted version requires many different kinds
of expert knowledge and the ability to perform a variety of tasks. One
approach to solving this restricted version is to use Single Function
Agents (SiFAs), each of which can perform a very specialized task, from a
single point of view. The ability to represent expertise with different
points of view is very important in design. These different points of view
usually cause conflicts among agents, and these conflicts need to be
resolved in order for the design process to be successful. Therefore,
agents need to be capable of detecting and resolving these conflicts. This
thesis presents a model of conflicts and negotiations in the SiFA
framework. Some extensions to the present state of the SiFA paradigm are
introduced. A hierarchy of possible conflicts is proposed and the steps of
the negotiation process are discussed. The ability of agents to negotiation
in order to resolve conflicts makes SiFA-based design systems more
versatile, less brittle, and easier to construct and maintain. Also, the
extended SiFA paradigm, where agents have negotiation capabilities leads to
many interesting directions for further research.
Ilan Berker
Thu Apr 27 16:25:38 EDT 1995