Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evolutionary Adaptation in Autonomous Agent Systems — A Paradigm for the Emerging Enterprise

  • Published:
BT Technology Journal

Abstract

The enterprise of the future needs to be flexible, adaptive, and to respond rapidly to market demands and opportunities. This, in turn, demands a flexible, adaptive infrastructure. A plausible way to achieve such an infrastructure is to base its organisation on autonomous agents, where each agent responds locally to the intra- and extra-organisational forces it experiences. Enterprise adaptation then arises as an emergent effect. The theories of Holland, and related work on complex adaptive systems, have a direct bearing on the emergence of system adaptation from the interaction of locally adaptive entities. This paper ties Holland's theory of artificial and natural adaptive systems to autonomous agent systems. To illustrate the use of these theories in this context, the paper presents a system of evolving autonomous agents, interacting in a simulated producer/consumer economic world. The paper presents preliminary results with the producer/consumer, evolving agents system, and discusses the implications of these results for evolving, adaptive enterprise infrastructure systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Smith R E: 'Memory exploitation in learning classifier systems', Evolutionary Computation, 2,No 3, pp 199-220 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  2. BT: 'Towards engineering intelligent systems', Special Issue of BT Technol J, 16,No 3 (July 1998).

  3. Huhns M N and Singh M P: 'Anthropod Agents', IEEE Internet Computing, 2,No 1, pp 94-95 (Jan/Feb 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kearney P J and Merlat W: 'Modelling market-based decentralised management systems', BT Technol J, 17,No 4, pp 145-156 (October 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Malone T W: 'Is 'Empowerment' just a Fad? Control, Decisionmaking, and Information Technology', BT Technol J, 17,No 4, pp 141-144 (October 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Franklin and Graesser: 'Is it an agent, or just a program?: Taxonomy for autonomous agents', in Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, Springer-Verlag. pp 21-35 (1997).

  7. Wooldridge M and Jennings N R: 'Software agents', IEE Review, pp 17-20 (January 1996).

  8. Cvitanovic P (Ed): 'Universality in chaos', Adam Hilger, 2nd Edition (1989).

  9. Forrest S (Ed): 'Emergent computation', Bradford Books, MIT Press (1990).

  10. Arthur W B, Durlauf S N and Lane D A (Eds): 'The economy as a complex evolving system, II', Santa Fe Institute (1997).

  11. Parunak V D — (1999) http://www.erim.org

  12. Kapsalis A, Smith G D and Rayward-Smith V J: 'A unified paradigm for parallel genetic algorithms', in Fogarty T (Ed): 'Evolutionary computing AISB workshop', Springer-Verlag, pp131-149 (1994).

  13. Smith R E and Dike B A: 'Learning novel fighter combat maneuver rules via genetic algorithms', International Journal of Expert Systems, 8,No 3, pp 247-276 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Holland J H: 'Adaptation in natural and artificial systems', The University of Michigan Press (1975).

  15. Goldberg D E: 'Genetic algorithms in search, optimisation, and machine learning', Addison-Wesley', Reading, MA (1989).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ray T: 'An approach to the synthesis of life', in Langton C, Taylor C, Farmer J D and Rasmussens (Eds): 'Artificial life, II', Addison-Wesley. pp 371-408 (1990).

  17. Brooks R A, Breazeal C, Irie R, Kemp C, Marjanovic M, Scassellat B and Williamson M: 'Alternate essences of intelligence', to appear in Proceedings of AAAI-98 Conference, AAAI Press (1998).

  18. Smith R E and Taylor N: 'A framework for evolutionary computation in agent-based systems', in Looney C and Castaing J (Eds): 'Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference on Intelligent Systems', ISCA Press, pp 221-224 (1998).

  19. Deb K and Goldberg D E: 'An investigation of niche and species formation in genetic function optimisation', Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, pp 42-50 (1989).

  20. Smith R E, Forrest S and Perelson A S: 'Searching for diverse, cooperative populations with genetic algorithms', Evolutionary Computation, 1,No 2, pp 127-149 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  21. Horn J, Goldberg D E and Deb K: 'Implicit niching in a learning classifier system: Nature's way', Evolutionary Computation, 2,No 1, pp 37-66 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Rosin C D and Belew R K: 'New methods in competitive coevolution', Evolutionary Computation. 5,No 1, pp 1-29 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  23. Aglets Workbench — http://www.trl.ibm.co.jp/aglets/

  24. Koza J R: 'Genetic programming: on the programming of computers by means of natural selection', MIT Press (1992).

  25. Smith R E and Goldberg D E: 'Diploidy and dominance in artificial genetic search', Complex Systems, 6,No 3, pp 251-285 (1992).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. R E Smith
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. P J Kearney
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. W Merlat
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

About this article

Cite this article

Smith, R.E., Kearney, P.J. & Merlat, W. Evolutionary Adaptation in Autonomous Agent Systems — A Paradigm for the Emerging Enterprise. BT Technology Journal 17, 157–167 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009667613845

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009667613845

Keywords

Search

Navigation