Adjusting Autonomy in Multi-Agent Bioinformatics Integration Systems

ISBN-13: 9783639169652 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 148 str.

Konstantinos Karasavvas

Opis

During task composition, such as can be found indistributed query processing, workflow systems and AIplanning, decisions have to be made by the system andpossibly by users with respect to how a given problemshould be solved. Although there is often more thanone correct way of solving a given problem, thesemultiple solutions do not necessarily lead to thesame result. Some researchers are addressing thisproblem by providing data provenance information.Others use expert advice encoded in a supportingknowledge-base. However, users do not usually trustcomplete automation during decision-making forcertain domains with natural variation, like biology;they need a way to be able to control and/orintervene with the systems reasoning to verify partsof the process. This book provides a thoroughanalysis of the problem and presents a data-centricmethodology of measuring decision criticality anddescribe its potential use. We argue that agenttechnology is a natural fit for the design ofdistributed heterogeneous integration systems,particularly in bioinformatics, and we propose amulti-agent system design and architecture as thebasis of our framework.