Available Theses

General topics:
Specific topics:


Here you can find theses developed by former students: Theses.  

For further information please contact me:  paolo.giorgini@dit.unitn.it



Negotiation in Agent-based Mobile Service Application

Technology has made it clear for everybody; advanced lightweight devices are ubiquitous and necessary. These devices employ reliable means of communications such as Bluetooth and recently, Wi-Fi. Long ago, we watched the entire world moving towards computer-based application services. Then, the Internet Bubble, which made us observe services that are extending to include aspects never existed before, all made remotely through the web. Nowadays, services are taking different shape, which is mobile-based. Unsurprisingly, novel services started to emerge on the way to meet new user’s requirements. In computer Science, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have played major role in delivering services content to lightweight devices. Cooperative Environments that Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and Ambient Intelligence (AmI) scholars are studying is mostly agent-based applications. Negotiation and coordination among agents differs when the assembled service is to be delivered to cellular phones. Time, network traffic and connectivity constraints in mobile environments are hardly accepting the exiting system negotiation models. We innovatively focus our research on implementing a dedicated agent’s negotiation protocol that can be standardized to assist Multi-Agent Systems that are serving Bluetooth enabled lightweight devices.
 
Reference:

http://dit.unitn.it/blueagents/
http://dit.unitn.it/blueagents/toothagent/
http://dit.unitn.it/blueagents/andiamo/index.htm
http://dit.unitn.it/~sameh/
 
 


Software variability representation

Description: an important aspect in current software is variability, namely the capability of software systems to perform their activities selecting different strategies. Feature models [1] and their extensions (among which [2][3]) are the widely adopted notation for representing variability. Recently, a formal semantics [4] was proposed to give a precise representation of feature diagrams. A complementary approach proposes the use of goal modeling to represent and analyze high level
(intentional) variability [5]. The objective of the thesis is todevelop  a tool to create, analyze, and formally represent a particular class of feature diagrams, intended to depict software configurations. The tool is fundamental step to enable the integration of self-configuration capabilities in Autonomic Computing [6] systems.

Requirements: Java programming, basic concepts of logics
Reference:

[1] K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Novak, S. Peterson. Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-21, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, November 1990

[2] K.C. Kang, S. Kim, J. Lee, K. Kim. FORM: A Feature-Oriented Reuse Method. In Annals of Software Engineering 5, pages 143-168, 1998

[3] M. Riebisch, K. Böllert, D. Streitferdt, I. Philippow. Extending Feature Diagrams with UML Multiplicities. In Proceedings of the Sixth Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology (IDPT 2002), Pasadena, CA, June 2002

[4] P.Y. Schobbens, P. Heymans, J.C. Trigaux. Feature Diagrams: A Survey and a Formal Semantics. In Proceedings of 14th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, 2006.

[5] S. Liaskos, L. Jiang, A. Lapouchnian, Y. Wang, Y. Yu, J. do Prado Leite, J. Mylopoulos. Exploring the Dimensions of Variability: a Requirements Engineering Perspective. In First Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems (VAMOS) Workshop, Limerick, Ireland, January 2007.

[6] J.O. Kephart, D.M. Chess. The Vision of Autonomic Computing. In Computer, Vol. 36, No. 1, January 2003.


Algoritmi di contrattazione per sistemi multi-agente: analisi e sviluppo delle varie tipologie di asta.

La tesi si colloca nell’ambito del progetto Andiamo. Viene richiesta un’analisi attenta delle varie tipologie di asta usualmente utilizzate (first price, second price, etc.) e l’implementazione di algoritmi che massimizzino la soddisfazione degli utenti che effettuano delle specifiche richieste al sistema. I vari approcci dovranno essere testati e confrontati per stabilire quale sia l’approccio migliore per ogni tipo di situazione.

Requirements: conoscenza Java.
References:     http://dit.unitn.it/blueagents/andiamo/     http://www.andiamocarpooling.it/


Progetto “Andiamo Carpooling”: analisi, sviluppo e test  del software per i terminali mobili

La tesi si colloca nell’ambito del progetto Andiamo. Viene richiesta la re-implementazione del software esistente per i cellulari e l’analisi delle performances. La comunicazione via sms esistente, dovrà essere affiancata dalla comunicazione via Bluetooth e/o GPRS.

Requirements: Java, J2ME
Reference: http://dit.unitn.it/blueagents/andiamo/     http://www.andiamocarpooling.it/


Learning how to play board/card games

The aim of the thesis is to evaluate effect of recommendations on the people learning to play games. Forza4 (ConnectFour) – a board game for two players is considered and a JADE-based simulator of the game has been developed already. The players in the simulator can estimate their situations after each turn (e.g. what is the probability of win), and therefore, they can measure the usefulness of suggestions (whether the situation became better or worse).
Your task will be to add the use of suggestions into this simulator, using a java library called the IC-Service. The suggestions will be based on past moves performed by players in similar situations. The further idea is to choose another game (e.g. card came such as Magic the Gathering, vampire: the eternal struggle, etc.) and to develop simulator for it, again using suggestions about moves.

Requirements: Java. Knowledge of JADE and basics of game theory is a plus.
Reference:


A system that facilitates scientific publications search

Description: The goal of the thesis is to develop a system that helps to search for a paper on a specific topic. The system architecture consists of the JADE-based multi-agent platform on the server side and web-based user interface used on the client side. The main focus will be on user interface: how to search papers, how to specify topics, how to display recommendations about papers and record feedback.

Requirements: web programming (something from this list: php/html/jsp/servlets/…). The knowledge of java and JADE platform is a plus.
Reference: you can see the description of the system here: http://dit.unitn.it/~birukou/publications/papers/200605aamas.pdf


Self-configuring multi-agent systems: implementation and analysis

The goal of the project is to develop an architecture of a multi-agent platform that is able to self-configure, that is to evolve dynamically in response to changes in its environment. A runtime reconfiguration mechanism will be based on AI planning for generating possible system configurations, and game theory inspired procedure for their evaluation. Your task is to provide an architecture of such a system, and implement it for further simulations.

Requirements: Java; some knowledge of agents and multi-agent systems, AI basics, and Jade/Jadex would be appreciated; your English should be good enough for reading and work discussions.
Reference: For the high-level description of the approach see http://dit.unitn.it/~bryl/bryl-giorgini-06-SOAS.pdf


Tool-supported requirements analysis: exploring and evaluating alternatives

The goal of the project is to develop a tool to support a requirements engineer in looking for, evaluating and comparing alternative
requirements configurations. A starting point would be an existing prototype tool which adopts i*/Tropos modeling notation to represent requirements graphically, and uses a planner to generate alternative requirements structures. Your task is to revise the architecture and to complete the implementation for the further validation.

Requirements: Java; some knowledge of requirements engineering, AI basics, agents and multi-agent systems would be appreciated; your English should be good enough for reading and work discussions.

Reference: For the early version of the work see http://dit.unitn.it/~bryl/bryl-giorgini-06-CoopIS.pdf


Design of Robust Coordination Protocols for Open Agent Multi-Agent Systems


Open Multi-Agent Systems are formed by collections of autonomous software agents that interact with one another in order to automatically negotiate services, for instance through the Internet. The openness of such environments requires the development of mechanisms that help make MAS operate more robustly by detecting and handling exceptions. This goal requires to learn how we can develop MAS for open contexts where the constituent agents can come from anywhere, may be buggy or even malicious, and must run in the dynamic and potentially failure-prone environments at hand.

The main goal of this thesis is to design a fault tolerant auction-based coordination protocol suitable for open Multi-Agent Systems. This requires at least two main tasks:
1) identify all the protocol-specific exceptions that can occur in an open environment
2) define an exception handling architecture for handling failures.

Possible plan of the work:
1) pick an auction-based agent coordination protocol
2) perform an exception analysis of the protocol, i.e. analyze it to identify the characterize ways that protocol can fail
3) analyze all the fault tolerant agent-based architectures present in literature in order to identify an approach suitable for handling failures or define a new one
4) design the exception handling architecture that can detect and handle the failures identified in 2) while making minimal assumptions about the agents
(- implement and test the architecture)

NOTES: Project in collaboration with Mark Klein (MIT Center for Collective Intelligence)