Search the Web for a site that uses a cyber character or cyber agent to host a business site. (If you create a successful cyber agent, you mat be able to get large companies to use it to sell their products online.)
1. Differentiate the various types of software agents.
Kfupm(1996) states that software agent can be classified 8 types.
There are collaborative agents, interface agents, mobile agents, information agents, reactive agents, hybrid agents, heterogeneous agent systems and smart agents. (See figure 1.)
Figure 1. A Classification of Software Agents
a.) Collaborative agents emphasise autonmy and cooperation (with other agents). Hence, they may have to negotiate in order to reach mutually acceptable agreements on some matters. They typically are large coarse-grained, deliberative-style agents with non-trivial internals.(Alex L. G. Hayzelden,1999)
b.) Interface agents / Information agents emphasise autonomy and learning in order to perform tasks for their owner. Pattie Maes, a key proponent of this class of agents, points out that the key metaphor underlying interface agents is that of a personal assistant who is collaborating with the user in the same work environment. Note the subtle emphasis and distinction between collaborating with the user and collaborating with other agents as is the case with collaborative agents.(Alex L. G. Hayzelden,1999)
c.) Mobile agents emphasise deploying mobile code that is the adoption of mobile agent technology. Mobile agent technology is concerned with the ability to move executable code from one computer to another.(Alex L. G. Hayzelden,1999)
d.) Reactive agents represent a special category of agents which do not possess internal,symbolic models of their environments; instead they act/respond in a stimulus-responsemanner to the present state of the environment in which they are embedded. (Kfupm, 1996 )
e.) Hybrid agents refer to those whose constitution is a combination of two or more agent philosophies within asingular agent. The key hypothesis for having hybrid agents or architectures is the belief that, for someapplication, the benefits accrued from having the combination of philosophies within asingular agent is greater than the gains obtained from the same agent based entirely on asingular philosophy. Otherwise having a hybrid agent or architecture is meaningless. Clearly,the motivation is the expectation that this hypothesis would be proved right; the ideal benefitswould be the set union of the benefits of the individual philosophies in the hybrid.(Alex L. G. Hayzelden,1999)
f.) Heterogeneous agent systems refer to an integrated set-up of at least two or more agents which belong to two or more different agent classes. The essential rationale for them is that the world abounds with a rich diversity of software products providing a wide range of services for a similarly wide range of domains. (Alex L. G. Hayzelden,1999)
g.) Smart agents are a new form of software agent that interface with other agents forming an artificial intelligence system. The acronym "SMART" stands for "System for Managing Agents in Real Time". This is a bit of a misnomer because the agents manage themselves and each other by agreeing to become part of the collective whole. SMART Agents work together, within a SMART system, to perform smaller pieces of larger programming tasks so that the combined collective can achieve great things with relatively simple programming building blocks. (Wikipedia, 2009).
References:
Alex L. G. Hayzelden(1999). "Software agents for future communication systems".Springer Publisher. pp 70-200.
Kfupm(1996). "Software Agents". Received 6th May, 2009 from URL - http://reference.kfupm.edu.sa/content/s/o/software_agents__an_overview__83303.pdf
Wikipedia (2009). "Smart Agents". Received 6th May, 2009 from URL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_Agents
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