39-405 Engineering Design
Agents and Agent-Based Systems

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The style of engineering computing will change dramatically over the next years. Today, computing is done by stand-alone-programs whose manuals require careful study and whose efforts require close supervision. Acquiring, learning and integrating such programs is often the most expensive part of a design project. In the future, computing will be done by autonomous, software agents, distributed over a network of computers. These agents will be self-organizing: given a task, appropriate agents will select and organize themselves into teams in which they will cooperate to perform the task. Such agents will be used for large tasks, such as designing a new computer, and also for smaller more personal tasks, such as managing one's stock account or selecting one's insurance carrier. Software houses will soon begin to produce such agents. The idea for a good agent will be reason enough to launch a new company and could make one rich.

What is an autonomous agent? How can such agents organize and cooperate? How should agents and other engineering products be designed? The lectures will cover the major concepts: agent-types, design practices, formal problem specification, search and other problem-solving methods, information management, organizational theory, and cooperation schemes for agents. But these concepts cannot be learned just by hearing about them. Rather, they are best learned through practice and collaboration by actually designing and building agents.

To facilitate practice and collaboration, the course will assemble a community of agent-developers (students and instructors). The students will form groups. Each group will develop an agent for a well chosen application with commercial potential. The instructors will provide a list of applications. Students may select from this list or, with the instructors' approval, design their own applications.

The largest part of the agent-development-community will be at CMU. But there will be other parts, possibly in Brazil, Norway and India. Communications, agent-testing, competitions, and collaborations will be conducted over the internet.

At CMU, the course is open to all seniors and graduate students in CIT. Other students may take the course with the instructors' permission.

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