News

• First meeting in this spring semester AY2024: Master's students enrolling in the spring semester of AY2024, undergraduate seniors assigned to our lab, and undergraduate juniors who have registered for project research in our lab will meet on April 3rd at 12:30 pm for the first meeting of this fall semester. The location is 55N-0502B. Eligible students are encouraged to attend.

• Our open lab is scheduled on March 18 and 19, 2024 for new 3rd year students (project research) and  new 4th year students (lab assignments).
      10:00 ~ 12:00, 14:00-17:00 on March 18
      10:00 ~ 12:00, 14:00-17:00 on March 19
  You are welcome to come to the lab (55N-0502B) during these hours. The open lab will be held in person. (announced on Feb. 1, 2024, revised on March 7)

• Sep. 21, 2023 (First meeting in this fall semester): Master's students enrolling in the fall semester of AY2023, undergraduate seniors assigned to our lab, and undergraduate juniors who have registered for project research in our lab will meet on Sep 29 at 1:00 pm for the first meeting of this fall semester. The location is 55N-0502B. Eligible students are encouraged to attend.

• Sep. 21, 2023: (International Course, Project Research, Closed): Project Research for new 3rd year (and above) International Course students has been closed because we have received the expected number of students.

• Sep. 1, 2023: Paper list has been updated.

• April  3, 2023: Member list has been updated.

• March 10, 2023 (First meeting): Master's students enrolling in the spring semester of AY2023, undergraduate seniors assigned to our lab, and undergraduate juniors who have registered for project research in our lab will meet on April 3 at 1:30 pm for the first meeting of the year AY2023. The location is 55N-0502B. Eligible students are encouraged to attend.

• February 13, 2023 (Project Research A and B): International-course Students who would like to do Project Research (A and B) will be interviewed beforehand before the decision is made. If you would like to apply, please send me an email. More information including my e-mail address will be announced around February 24. Please also refer to the information on open lab scheduled for March 20, 22, and 23, 2023.

• Jan. 18, 2023: Our open lab is scheduled during March 20, 22, and 23, 2023 for 3rd year students (project research) and  4th year students (lab assignments).
      March 20, 10:00 ~ 12:00, 14:00-17:00
      March 22 10:00 ~ 12:00, 14:00-17:00
      March 23 10:00 ~ 12:00
  You are welcome to come to the lab (55N-0502B) during these hours. The open lab will be held in person.

• Nov. 27, 2022: An open lab is planned on March 20,22,23, 2023. More details will be announced later on this page. There will be a slot for international course students for Lab explanation. For now, we are planning to hold open labs in person.

• September 24, 2022: Member list has been updated.

• April 1, 2022: Member list has been updated.

• Feb. 24, 2022: To International course students (Project Research):
  This is Information on open labs only for 2nd and 3rd year students at Waseda University. If you are intersted in Project Research in our lab., please email to Professor (sugawara 'at' waseda.jp) to make an appointment for interview (Zoom, e-mail or face-to-face interview).
  We will hold our open laboratory using Zoom as follows (Passcode is `AI' in capital letters). Students from the lab will explain about the contents of our research and the atmosphere of the lab. 

• March 22nd
  　10:30 ― 12:00 (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxxx)
  　14:00 ― 16:00 (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxx -> Change to in-person briefing session, please come directly to 55N-0502B.)

• March 23rd
  　10:30 ― 12:00 (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxxx)
  　14:00 ― 16:00 (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxxx)

• March 24th
  　10:30 ― 12:00 for International Course Students (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxxx)
  　13:00 ―  (https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxxxxxxx)
  You are free to attend any session. Lab explanations and questions will be in Japanese, but English will be available in the morning of the 24th. Note that the session will be cancelled if there are no participants 15 minutes after the start of the session. When entering a Zoom meeting, change the display of your name to "student number + name" and also enter it to chat window. 

• May 28, 2021: Paper list has been updated.

• March. 31, 2021: Member list has been updated.

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:

• Multi-Agent Systems

• Distributed Artificial Intelligence

• Coordination and Cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems

• Multi-Agent Planning (such as multi-agent path planning)

• Machine Learning for Cooperative and Coordinated Activities

• Negotiation in Massively Multi-agent Systems

• Effects of organizational and inter-agent network structures

• Swarm Intelligence

• Multi-Agent Simulations

• Coexistence of and mutual effects between agents (including people)

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.