Intelligent Software Laboratory 

(Multi-agent systems Laboratory)

Computer Science and Communications Engineering
 Waseda University, Japan

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Introduction

Professor: Toshiharu Sugawara

The Intelligent Software Laboratory (ISL) explores the theory, development, and analysis of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (or Distributed Artificial Intelligence) and their applications in various domains, including Internet and/or Web applications and multi-agent simulations. Please note that our laboratory is not engineering oriented and rather focuses on academic and scientific purposes.

Research on multi-agent systems (or Distributed Artificial Intelligence)is one of the active research fields in artificial intelligence (AI). Autonomous agents are intelligent programs that are capable of perceiving local environments and taking appropriate action to move toward their goals based on independent decision-making. An multi-agent system consists of loosely-coupled autonomous, rational agents capable of coordinated/collaborative actions to achieve individual or joint goals in cooperation with other agents. Research activities include a broad range of efforts to develop and apply this type of coordinated actions.

Our research topics include:

In particular, we have addressed the issues related with large-scale multi-agent systems: Although recent advances in Internet services, sensor networks, pervasive computing, and grid computing exhibit the need for multi-agent systems, they further require more sophisticated multi-agent system technologies for large-scale and busy environments. For example, e-commerce transactions, which frequently appear in the current Internet era, consist of coordinated tasks including interactions among a variety of agents in charge of customer authentication and management, stock management, shipping control, and payment processing. These kinds of tasks simultaneously and frequently occur throughout in the world. In sensor-network applications, agents reside in many sensor and computational devices and, in grid computing, many computational entities should concurrently process the assigned sub-problems into which a large computation problem is decomposed. In these applications, many of the tasks should be allocated appropriately to maximize the entire abilities of multi-agent systems, in order to realize efficiency and high-quality services.

We also think about the coexistence with computer programs that are deployed everywhere in the Internet, smartphone, and often home appliances. They affect each other at many levels of social activities. Taking optimal actions are usually good for individuals (people and programs), but may not be good from social viewpoints due to excessive/wasteful competition. We believe that socially harmonious coexistence between people and programs will be strongly required in near future.

If you are interested in studying our lab as a master or doctor course student, please visit this page.

The Intelligent Software Laboratory is part of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Fundamental Science and Engineeing at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.