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agent should plan for their own short-term acts.
(2) Interactive. That is the awareness and influence to environment. Whether the
agent survival in the real world (such as robots, Internet services on the agent,
etc.) or the virtual world (such as the agents in virtual shopping malls, etc.).
They are able to sense the environment and can change environment through
behaviors. An agent can not called “Agent” if it can not affect the
environment.
(3) Collaborative. Usually the agent is not alone there, but survival in a lot of the
agent world. The good and effective cooperation among agents can greatly
enhance the multi-agent system performance.
(4) Communication. This is also the fundamental characteristics of an agent. The
so-called communications, means of information exchange between the
agents. Furthermore, the agents and people should be able to carry out a
certain sense of "conversation." To undertake the task, agents' collaboration
and negotiation is based on communication.
(5) Longevity (or coherence time). Traditional procedures are activated when
needed, be stopped when the operator end. The agent is different. It should at
least "fairly long" for the time to run. Although not the indispensable
characteristics of agents, it is generally believed that is the important
characteristics of agents.
Figure 14.1. the agent entity (Russell et al., 1995)
In addition, some scholars also raised the agent should be adaptive,
personality and other characteristics. In practical applications, the agent needs
take actions under certain restrictions of time and resources. Therefore, the
agents in real world should have real-time characteristics besides the general
natures.
At present, the research on multi agent system is very active. Multi-agent
systems are trying to use the agents to simulate the human behaviors. Agents are
