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SMC Society Technical Committee on
Distributed Intelligent Systems

William A. Gruver, Dilip B. Kotak, and Haibin Zhu

Distributed Intelligent Systems

Distributed intelligent systems make use of cooperative agents and are organized in hardware or software components that are capable of independently executing specialized tasks and are simultaneously capable of cooperating with other agents to achieve system wide goals. Each agent depicts its own local intelligence and the interactions between agents, also depicts a higher level intelligence emerging out of their cooperative behaviour. Centralized intelligent systems, however, depend upon servers to provide communications and intelligence. This reliance on centralized servers for makes them highly complex, inflexible, difficult to integrate, maintain and scale up to suit the changing needs of organisations. Distributed Intelligent System technologies do not have these weaknesses. By distributing the logistic and strategic requirements of a system, it is possible to achieve greatly improved robustness, reliability, scalability, and security. A key to achieving these benefits is the use of holonic system technologies that establish peer-to-peer environments to enable coordination, collaboration, and cooperation within wireline and wireless networks.

Adaptation is a special property of humans. From the viewpoint of Systems of Systems, Distributed Intelligent Systems offer opportunities to achieve adaptation and thereby ensure satisfactory overall system performance. The development of these systems is challenging because developers must consider user/agent modelling, user/agent information acquisition, environment information acquisition, group structures, component independence, role/task/intelligence/knowledge models, distribution of knowledge, intelligence, resources, and roles, user/agent evaluation, and evolution of the system and its components.

Role-Based Collaboration

Distribution and collaboration are key issues of the research and practice of distributed intelligent systems. Role-Based Collaboration is a fundamental methodology that uses roles as underlying mechanisms to facilitate abstraction, classification, and separation of concerns, dynamics, distribution, interactions, coordination, and collaboration.

With role-based collaboration, distributed intelligent systems can be analysed, designed, and implemented through well-defined role mechanisms and role engine facilities. Roles and role relations regulate the activities of agents. Distributed intelligent systems can be made adaptive to meet the requirement of consecutive changes of systems through agent evaluation, initial group role assignment, and dynamic role assignment or role transfer. Roles and environments provide direct requirements of adaptation, the foundations to evaluate agents and guide dynamic role assignment.

Role-based collaboration is an emerging technology that provides promising solutions to service systems, computer-supported cooperative work systems, human-machine systems, human-computer interaction, sensor networks, social networks, and production systems. Workshops and special sessions on role-based collaboration have been organized at the annual SMC conferences and the International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems.

Holonic Systems

Holonic systems can be viewed as collaborative agent systems with special properties. They are based on the pioneering work of Arthur Koestler in the late 1960s, as described in his book The Ghost in the Machine on the modeling of biological and social systems consisting of self-contained elements that function as autonomous entities in a cooperative environment. The term holon, introduced by Koestler to describe such an element, is a fusion of the Greek word ‘holos’ meaning whole and the suffix ‘on’ denoting a particle.

The Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) Project was an industrially driven project during 1995-2004 to address systemization and standardization, research, pre-competitive development, deployment, and support of HMS architectures and technologies for open, distributed, intelligent, autonomous and co-operating systems. It was a major project of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) Program with 40 partners from Australia, Canada, Japan, European Union, and USA, comprising large and small industrial users, vendors, universities, and research institutes. Its principal goal was the advancement of the state of the art in discrete, continuous, and batch manufacturing through the integration of highly flexible, reusable and modular manufacturing. The membership of the TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems includes former members of the HMS Consortium.

Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems

The Technical Committee (TC) on Distributed Intelligent Systems is a special interest group consisting of an international network of specialists active in the research and applications of collaborative agent-based systems. Key application areas include manufacturing and supply chains, and infrastructures for service, energy, transportation, and emergency management systems. The core research topics for these systems include agent architectures, agent intelligence, agent communications, agent collaboration, agent simulation and optimization, and agent human-machine interfaces. Fundamental to these topics is the role based"approach for agent design. SMC Society members are invited to participate in activities of the TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems by contributing papers to SMC Society sponsored conferences and workshops, organizing special sessions or tutorials related to the technologies and applications of the TC, and exchanging results with peers prior to publication or commercialization. Most importantly, the TC offers a unique opportunity for our members to network with international specialists and learn about this exciting, emerging field.

The major goal of the TC is to provide a forum for discussing, promoting, and disseminating research pertaining to the development and application of Distributed Intelligent Systems. To accomplish this objective, we are active in a number of different activities of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society. Recent activities of the TC include the following:

The impetus for this TC arose from participation by many of our members in previous international consortia and research programs, particularly the Holonic Manufacturing Systems Consortium.

The TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems provides its members with opportunities to expand professional and personal development by

The HMS Consortium has provided funding for a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part C on "Industrial Applications of Holonic Systems" to be published in 2010. In addition, reports of the HMS Consortium will be made available for non-commercial purposes to members of the TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems.

How can I join the TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems?

To join the TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems and participate in its activities, email one of the co-chairs listed on the TC webpage and include a resume.

Selected Publications of TC Members

[1] Fabio Bellifemine, Giovanni Caire, and Dominic Greenwood, Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE, Wiley, 2007.
[2] Robert W. Brennan, "Toward Real-Time Distributed Intelligent Control: A survey of research themes and applications," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, Volume 37, Issue 5, September 2007, pp 44 - 765
[3] Robert W. Brennan, J. H. Christensen, William A. Gruver, Dilip B. Kotak, Douglas H. Norrie, and Edwin van Leeuwen, "Holonic Manufacturing Systems – A Technical Overview," Industrial Information Technology Handbook, CRC Press, 2004.
[4] Robert W. Brennan, William A. Gruver, Edwin van Leeuwen, and Ken H. Hall (eds), "Special Issue on Industrial Applications of Holonic Systems," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, to appear in 2010.
[5] Giovanni Caire, Giovanni Rimassa, and Fabio Bellifemine, "JADE: a versatile run-time for distributed applications on mobile terminals and networks," Proc. of the 2004 IEEE International Conference Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Volume 2, Issue, 10 -13, vol. 2, October 2004 pp 1882 – 1888.
[6] William A. Gruver, Dilip B. Kotak, Edwin H. Van Leeuwen, and Douglas H. Norrie, "Holonic Manufacturing Systems: Phase II," Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems for Manufacturing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2744, 2004.
[7] Colin Ng, Zafeer Alibhai, Dorian Sabaz, Ozge Uncu, and William A. Gruver, "Framework for developing distributed systems in a peer-to-peer environment," Proc. of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2006.
[8] Zeinab Noorian, Hadi Hosseini and Mihaela Ulieru, "An autonomous agent-based framework for self-healing power grid," Proc. of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, San Antonio, Texas, October 2009.
[9] Dorian Sabaz, Zafeer Alibhai and William A. Gruver, "A multi-agent framework for distributed trading," Proc. of the IEEE Workshop on Distributed Intelligent Systems: Collective Intelligence and Its Applications, Prague, Czech Republic, June 2006.
[10] Michal Pechoucek and Vladimir Mařík, "Industrial deployment of multi-agent technologies: Review and selected case studies," Proc. of the International Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2008, pp 387-2532.
[11] L.J. Luotsinen and L. Bölöni, "Role-based teamwork activity recognition in observations of embodied agent actions," Proc. of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 08), 2008, pp 567–574.
[12] Weiming Shen, Jianming Yong, Yun Yang, Jean-Paul A. Barthes, and Junzhou Luo (eds.), Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 2008.
[13] Pavel Tichy, Vladimir Mařík, Pavel Vrba, Raymond J. Staron, Francisco P. Maturana, Kenwood Hall, "Deployment of agent technologies in industrial applications," Proc. of the IEEE Workshop on Distributed Intelligent Systems: Collective Intelligence and Its Applications, Prague, Czech Republic, June 2006, pp 243 - 250
[14] P. Tichý, P. Šlechta, R. J. Staron, F. P. Maturana, and K. H. Hall, "Multiagent technology for fault tolerance and flexible control," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part C: Applications and Reviews, vol. 36, no. 5, pp 700-705, 2006.
[15] Paul Valckenaers, John A. Sauter, Carles Sierra, Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, "Applications and environments for multi-agent systems," Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Vol. 14(1), 2007, pp 61-85.
[16] P. Vrba, V. Mařík, and M. Merdan, "Physical deployment of agent based industrial control solutions: MAST story," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Distributed Human-Machine Systems, Athens, Greece, 2008, pp 133-139.
[17] Haibin Zhu and MengChu Zhou, "Roles in Information Systems: A Survey," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Part C, Applications and Reviews, vol. 38, no. 3, May 2008, pp 377-396.
[18] H. Zhu, "Role mechanisms in collaborative systems," International Journal of Production Research, vol. 44, no. 1, January 2006, pp 181-193.
[19] H. Zhu and M.C. Zhou, "Role-based collaboration and its kernel Mechanisms," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics – Part C, Applications and Reviews, vol. 36, no. 4, July 2006, pp 578-589.

December 15, 2009