AgentBuilder Agency Viewer: Grocery Shopping Agency

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Agency Tool
This applet is a demonstration of one component in the AgentBuilder® Tool Suite, the Agency Tool. The Agency Tool uses a graphical window to view an entire agency. The window is populated by icons that represent the individual agents in the system. These icons represent specific agents that the user has constructed. The user can move an icon to any position on the screen. When the agents communicate, a line representing agent messages is drawn from the communication source agent to the communication destination agent.

Double clicking on an agent, displays an agent window. This window provides a dynamic view with runtime information about the agent. The following information is available:
 agent name
 start time/date
 current location
 agencies containing the agent
 author name
 vendor name
 ontological libraries

The agent window allows the user to issue commands to the agent.Currently, all commands are disabled except viewing the agent message history. The commands include:
 reset the agent
 kill the agent
 pause/unpause the agent
 start the agent debugger and attach it to the agent
 start the agent editing process
 view interagent message history
 dump the mental state of the agent

The Grocery Shopping Agency
This sample illustrates a grocery shopping agency. There are three different agent types involved, a user agent, a shopper agent and a store agent. The user agent is responsible for interacting with the user and informing the user of choices and results. The user agent gets the shopping list from the user, shows the best prices obtained from the store agents and then queries the user for permission to buy the list. The shopper agent finds the best possible price for the items on the shopping list. It queries all known grocery store agents, calculates the best price and returns the results to the user agent. It also makes the purchase when instructed by the user agent. The store agents are information servers. They supply requesting agents with information and can also negiotiate the purchase of products.

Instructions
  To start the demo press the "Begin" button.
  The "Pause" button stops sending messages between agents, until "Pause" is pressed again.
  The "Stop" button will stop sending messages between agents.
  The "Show Time" option displays the time elapsed since last sending a message.
  You can change agent position using the mouse to drag them to their new position.
  At any time during the demo, you can double click on any agent to bring up a window displaying its relevant information.

The Grocery Shopping Agency Demo


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Last modified: November 15, 2011
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