Developing Intelligent Agent Systems

Build your own intelligent agent system... Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computerscience that can be used to engineer complex computer programmesthat behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments.Applications range from small programmes that intelligently searchthe Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, toautonomous space probes. This powerful technology is not widely used, however, asdeveloping intelligent agent software requires high levels oftraining and skill. The authors of this book have developedand tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agentsystems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developerscan start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily fromscratch saving valuable time and resources. Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers thequestions "what are agents?" and "why are theyuseful?" but also the crucial question: "how do Idesign and build intelligent agent systems?" The book coverseverything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively usethis technology - including an introduction to the notion ofagents, a description of the concepts involved, and a softwareengineering methodology. Read on for: * a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and buildingintelligent agent systems. * a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agentsystems covering specification, analysis, design and implementationof agents. * PDT: Prometheus Design Tool - software support forthe Prometheus design process. * the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the designprocess throughout the book. Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT),can be found at: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheus This book is aimed at industrial software developers, softwareengineers and at advanced undergraduate students. It assumesknowledge of basic software engineering but does not requireknowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiaritywith Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.