Task Oriented Collaboration in Synthetic Environments

Liz Sonenberg
Information Systems
University of Melbourne

Friday, 30th June 2000
0930 - 1100

SEECS library (room B1.24)
University of Melbourne Computer Science Department
SEECS Building
221 Bouverie Street, Carlton.

Abstract:

Part of the "art" of building software systems that can exhibit complex behaviours in unpredictable environments is to find a balance between the effort required of the system designer to specify what should happen in various circumstances, as against the computational effort that the system can exert at run time to select behaviour appropriate to the circumstance.

In the presentation I will review work conducted at Melbourne University that explores different ways of approaching this balance, and put it in the context of developments elsewhere.  In particular I will discuss work on teamwork and on conflict resolution, especially addressing conflicts between individual and team goals.

Biosketch:

Liz Sonenberg is Head of the Department of Information Systems and Co-Director of the Intelligent Agent Laboratory at the University of Melbourne which comprises students and researchers from the Dept. of Information Systems and the Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering (where she spent fifteen happy years).  After early-career skirmishes with mathematical logic and foundations of logic programming, Liz has spent recent years working on various aspects of agent systems, with particular attention to collaboration and teamwork.