How Agents Work

Wondering about exactly what agents are and what they are supposed to do. Finally found a simple example scenario which I believe is a compelling reason to use agents for when appropriate (in this case negotation):

Agents cooperate on a number of levels. First, they share their perception.
Next, we enabled our agents to share their agent state (e.g. that the
agent carries no gold items) and intentions (such as “I plan to pick gold at
X,Y”) as they may choose to go to the same unknown field or to pick the
same gold item. Now every agent can appraise from what it knows if it will
be better to leave the team member alone or to take the intention as its
own when its more promising.
Our approach to communication and cooperation is fully decentralised.
Each agent has the capability for finding the other agent on the network.
It then directly tells every agent about its perception, agent state and intentions.
There is neither a message broker nor a central instance which
coordinates the contest agents. Every agent builds its own world model from
what it is told by the server and the other agents. Every agent also plans for itself, taking the states and intentions of its teammates into account.

opus4.kobv.de/opus4-tuberlin/files/3610/hessler_axel.pdf

OWL vs Java

Also be careful when declaring properties: properties in OWL can inherit other
properties and can be attached to more then one class. Not so in Java.

opus4.kobv.de/opus4-tuberlin/files/3610/hessler_axel.pdf