Coougar - Highlights essays

Coougar - Highlights essays Cougaar (Cognitive Agent Architecture) is the most advanced agent architecture to date and was demonstrated by DARPA and DLAs 5-year Advanced Logistics Project (ALP). ALPs final demonstration was held in May 2001 and consisted of building a level-5 logistics plan in one hour. The demonstration showed the results of 300 organizations with 5000 functional processes working together to create the logistics plan. The plan gives the methods to transport food, fuel, construction material, ammo, medical supplies, spare parts, 20,000 major end items, and 33,000 people transported from US to the tactical assembly area. Courgaar is patterned after the Human Cognitive Process and is based on agent-oriented architecture. The human cognitive process consists of three functions: 1. Task Expander Function - Decomposing larger tasks into smaller ones 2. Allocator Function Allocate resources to those tasks. 3. Assessor Function Continually assess how we are doing. Agent-oriented architecture is the next step beyond object-oriented or the client-server model. Object-oriented focuses on a data centric view to build objects. In object-oriented systems there is a central point of process coordination. Agent-oriented shifts to a process centric view of creating systems. It is still based on OO technologies but uses a process based approach to design focused on emulating the properties of agency, of humans, yielding distinct advantages over its predecessor. Agent-oriented systems demonstrate true distributed computing. Clients coordinate data and processes between all members of the system removing the need for a central server. Each component is self managing and can dynamically establish relationships, coordinate with other components, and communicate within the system as needed. What is an agent and what do they do? An agent is an element of software that ca ...