NOTE: If an electronic version of a
paper is not available here, or you are unable to successfully download
the paper that you want in the formats available, please contact MIT
Document Services at (617) 253-5668, DOCS@MIT.EDU.
Please do not contact the authors for copies of papers.
Domain-Independent Exception Handling Services That Increase Robustness in Open Multi-Agent Systems
Mark Klein and Chrysanthos Dellarocas
May 2000
A critical challenge to creating
effective multi-agent systems is allowing them to operate effectively in
environments where failures (‘exceptions’) can occur. This paper describes
the motivation, progress and plans for work being pursued in this area
by the MIT Adaptive Systems and Evolutionary Software research group (http://ccs.mit.edu/ases/).
An Experimental Evaluation of Domain-Independent Fault Handling Services in Open Multi-Agent Systems
Chrysanthos Dellarocas and Mark Klein
May 2000
A critical challenge to creating
effective open multi-agent systems is allowing them to operate effectively
in the face of potential failures. In this paper we present an experimental
evaluation of a set of domain-independent services designed to handle the
failure modes ("exceptions") that can occur in such environments, applied
to the well-known "Contract Net" multi-agent system coordination protocol.
We show that these services can produce substantially more effective fault
handling behavior than standard existing techniques, while allowing simpler
agent implementations.
CCS No. 213, Sloan No. 4124
Takeshi Yoshioka, JoAnne Yates, Wanda Orlikowski
July 2000
This paper explores the challenges of adopting a personal-computer-based
meeting technology in several geographically dispersed units of a global
organization. We use community-based interpretive schemes as an analytic
lens for examining community assumptions and expectations about genre,
technology and culture, and how they shaped use of the technology over
time.
CCS No. 214, Sloan No. 4127
Coordinating Information Using Genres
Takeshi Yoshioka & George Herman
August 2000
In this paper, we demonstrate how a community may use genres for coordinating
information. Genres help coordinate information related to resources, place
and time since members in the community have enacted genres in the past
and have expectations of the socially recognized information that genres
bring. Using the HICSS website, we illustrate that genres are used for
coordinating information addressing aspects of coordination mechanisms
such as divisibility, concurrency, accessibility and timing that help people
improve the coordination of work processes. We model these aspects using
the Process Handbook, a process knowledge repository developed at MIT,
and suggest that system designers and users may benefit from an explicit
recognition of the coordination provided by using genres and by exploration
of similar coordination through the use of this repository.
Jintae Lee and Brian Pentland
December 2000
This paper introduces a grammatical approach to the design and redesign
of work processes. Process grammar allows an explicit representation
of the space of possible processes within a given domain, making it possible
to search for alternatives more effectively than traditional techniques.
Unlike some applications of formal grammar, where complete representation
is required, process grammars can be useful even when the representation
of the domain is incomplete. We argue that grammatical analysis provides
a complementary approach to process redesign, rather than a substitute
for existing approaches.
CCS Home | Working Papers | What's New? | People | Links | Site Map | Comments