Multi-agents cooperating method and system

Abstract

A multi-agent cooperating system and method which is capable of being applied to a plurality of users with a simple composition and of performing efficient processing. The system comprises an agent group composed of a plurality of agents for providing services to the user, a user definition storing section for storing personal information such as user preferences for the options when requesting a service, and a user agent for converting the request from the user into an appropriate form with reference to the contents in the user definition storing section and transmitting them to the agent group, or transmitting the value of the attributes of the user with reference to the user definition storing section when user characteristics are requested from the agent group. The user agents are coupled to the agent group corresponding to each user.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . A multi-agent cooperating system for providing services in reply to a request from a user by cooperative operation of a plurality of agents, said system comprising: 
 a means for storing a combination of a request pattern from the user and selected agent suited to execute the request among the agents available for processing the request;    means for distributing a subsequent request of the same pattern to the selected agent.    
     
     
         2 . A multi-agent cooperating system for providing services in reply to a request from a user by cooperative operation of a plurality of agents, said system comprising: 
 a means for storing a request pattern from the user and a portion of said plurality of agents which provide an estimation value higher than a predetermined estimation criterion;    means for determining cooperative operation said portions of agents upon receipt of a request of the same pattern.    
     
     
         3 . A multi-agent cooperating method for executing cooperative operation by use of a multi-agent cooperating system having agents for providing services requested from a user and a field manager for managing cooperative operation of the agents so as to provide services in reply to a request from a user by cooperative operation of a plurality of agents using messages in a field within a scope of the management by the field manager, said method comprising the steps of: 
 transmitting information from said field manager to the agents in the field of the request from the user;    determining agents which can process the request;    presenting conditions to said user to accept the request from the agents which can process the request; and    executing the request by an agent corresponding to conditions designated by the user.