[Swarm-Modelling] Re: [Swarm-Support] Re: Agent communication and grid models

[Kanagaraj Krishna]

Hi,
Thanks for the input. Are you're simulation codes  available for me to have a 
look at. I prefer refering to java examples of SWARM, so that it would be 
easier for me to integate into my work.

Regarding how my model works. This models will simulate the management of trust 
among agents in a multi agent trading environment (more applicable to 
internet.....e-commerce etc). I'll play around with the parameters to study the 
behaviour of my new model. 

I'll give a brief outline of how the agents in the society works.

-buyer agents gives priority to known trader agents first, when sending slave 
agents to do trading. (experience based trust ratings)
-next if there hasn't been any experience with a trader agent before........the 
buyer agents will ask its trusted friends for support. (trust based on 
reputation/recommendation) 
-and the last choice is to explore and take risk with the unknown trader agent.
-the same vice versa for the trader agents in choosing a buyer. 

Any comments.

Thanks again,
Kana

--

--------- Original Message ---------

DATE: Mon, 26 May 2003 00:57:15
From: Darren Schreiber <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden, address@hidden
Cc: 

>(I am cross posting this to the modeling list, since my discussion is 
>more on the theory than code related.  If your thoughts are on the 
>modeling side, you'd get more interesting replies by following it up 
>there.)
>
>There are a lot of possible topologies that you can use, not just 
>grids.  If I were you, I would think more about the substantive problem 
>and what kind of model topology you think would best describe the real 
>world problems you are interested in studying.
>
>Grids are nice because they are easy to visualize and it is pretty easy 
>to manage proximity and distance.  Plus, there are pre-existing 
>examples you can work from.  But, you might also specify a hex (six 
>sided) grid since you don't have the "corner" problem of square grids.
>
>In some of my work, I have used both square grids and continuous 
>spaces.  My political party model envisions agents with positions on 
>diverse number of political issues.  Each issue dimension runs from 0 
>to 100, and since I use floating points to represent the position, 
>agents can be anywhere along that continuum (i.e. they are not 
>constrained to position 1, 5, or 10, but could be 1.20348 or 5.294842).
>
>But, because of the nature of the political world I am interested in 
>modeling, I did not want to constrain my agents to a single issue 
>dimension.  So, I set the model up to handle an arbitrary number of 
>issues.  In later versions of this model (coming soon (like 6 months or 
>so)), this model will be used to illustrate how we have one ideological 
>dimension (left to right) emerge out of a space containing many issue 
>dimensions.  Thus, the space that my agents traverse is a 
>multidimensional one.
>
>Furthermore, because not all political issues are equally important, I 
>have altered the geometry of the space so that distance is not the 
>typical Euclidean measure, but is instead a weighted Euclidean distance 
>where some dimensions are viewed as more important than others.  
>Similarly, since a bundle of political issues might be related to each 
>other (not independent) I allow the separability of the dimensions to 
>be changed.  Both of these tricks are accomplished by sticking a little 
>matrix of weights into the standard Euclidean distance measure.  And, 
>since not everyone agrees about the salience or separability of issues, 
>I allow every agent in my model to have its own perceptions of the 
>topology of the political universe.  I may thus view our political 
>positions as very similar, but you might view them as very different.  
>This creates a relativistic geometry quite different than the Cartesian 
>grids that we learn in high school.
>
>Rather than starting with coding constraints, I started with the 
>substantive problem, worked towards a plausible model, sketched some 
>concepts, and then got into the coding.  Because my design is heavily 
>parameterized, I can represent a simple two dimensional space with 
>integer values like a grid or a high dimensional relativistic geometry 
>using the same code.
>
>To manage communication and agent interaction, I put all of the agents 
>onto a list as they were created.  All agents have the ability to send 
>and get messages.  To find nearby agents, they look through the list of 
>all agents and calculate the distance to each agent.  My agents also 
>have the ability to form hierarchical networks, so they have a list of 
>agents below them and above them in the hierarchy.
>
>Now, the method of searching a list of all agents is not optimized in 
>terms of coding, but I am willing to sacrifice that for the flexibility 
>that my model has in representing my substantive beliefs.  Furthermore, 
>it isn't hard to think of some ways of creating subdivided the agent 
>lists to make it faster to find adjacent agents.
>
>So, what I would do is think about the substantive problem you are 
>representing.  When your buyer sends out his representatives, is he 
>asking them to walk down the street to talk to other traders?  Are they 
>getting in planes and flying to another city or country?  Or, are they 
>staying behind the desk and working the phone lines cold calling 
>perspective traders?  Or, perhaps the representatives exist in a social 
>network of other agents who know other agents?
>
>In my view, the programming issues here are much simpler than than 
>modeling issues.  And, you are more likely to useful help on the 
>programming once you know what you want.  As far as Swarm is concerned, 
>it is incredibly flexible (good enough to handle my relativistic 
>hyper-dimensional hierarchically networked topology).
>
>       Darren
>
>
>On Sunday, May 25, 2003, at 10:57  PM, Kanagaraj Krishna wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> -Are there any SWARM examples that involves interaction between agents 
>> (commuication) that can help me in designing my model (java ones).
>> Example: one buyer agent release few slave agents to interact with few 
>> trader agents to do business and then come back to report.
>>
>> -Most of the examples used the grid/lattice way of designing 
>> models......are this the only way?
>>
>> -Are there any specific functions for an agent to look for another 
>> specific agent in a world? how can this be done?
>>
>> I was looking into the CharlesJavaTutorial examples on bugs looking 
>> for food. It is more straight forward and there is no interaction 
>> between agents.Thanks.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Kana
>>
>>
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