Agent-based Generic Scheduling Engine Builder

The innovation of this proposal is use of negotiating software autonomous agents to allow creation of a generic scheduling engine that can be customized to a particular application. Our generic scheduling agents have the ability to interact with eachother in a contract net paradigm, bidding and negotiating based on generic protocols, independent of the particular application for which a schedule is being created. The agents are particularized to a specific application by defining multi-dimensionalvalue functions and constraints for each agent based on what that agent represents in the specific application problem. IAI has been working in the area of negotiating software autonomous agents for over a decade and we already have foundational softwarewhich will allow the above development. In our current agent-based software systems, we routinely have 20,000 software agents executing simultaneously on 10 computers, all cooperatively functioning in a single system. To generate the agent-based system,IAI will also exploit a new Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool IAI is developing called Diva. Using Diva for this development will help insure that the results are generic and reusable as the system is built. The work will also result inimprovements to Diva to better support development of more generic agent-based applications. IAI is currently working on many projects based on the success of its software agent tools and techniques. The proposed work will allow us to create thatsoftware in a more generic manner so that the results will be more generic, more reusable, and more easily adjusted as applications change. In addition to our own use of the generic scheduling engine technology, IAI's agent infrastructure, called Cybele,has been acquired by over 350 people/organizations, and each of these is a potential user of the tools and techniques which will result from the proposed work.