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At the basis of our research stands the idea of self-organization in complex adaptive systems, and the notion of hybrid networks: humans and computers working together as one system.
Information and communication technology, especially multi-agent technology, can be used to organize networks. We explore the fundamentals of self-organization and ways to incorporate them into the following networks:
* Networks of people: Agents can communicate much faster and with more others than humans can. We use agents to take care of highly frequent and dynamic communication to support human organizations. Agents adapt based on human interaction
* Networks of entities: We investigate how distributed coordination can be used to support organizations in last-minute planning and scheduling. Trucks and packages are represented by software-agents and they negotiate to provide an effective solution
* Sensors networks: The challenge is to develop ways to introduce learning / conditioning in the sensor network to create a dynamic filtering and escalation system that triggers reaction when necessary.
Underlying the research, we have developed a technology platform called CHAP: Common Hybrid Agent Platform. The goal is to provide a rich base architecture for building adaptive distributed systems comprising both artificial entities and human actors.
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The 2010 edition of ICTDelta will be an inspiring and dynamic festival revealing all the latest on Dutch ICT initiatives. The festival, held on the 18th of March, presents a packed programme of presentations, discussion sessions and demonstrations. Among those demonstrations is The Marauder's Map by Almende spin-off SENSE Observation Systems, part of the What's Cooking theme
It's no coincidence that Metaverse1, an ITEA 2 project Almende participates in, is named after a fictional virtual world in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The Metaverse in Snow Crash is an urban environment, either projected as high-quality virtual reality display onto goggles worn by the user, or shown as low-quality public terminals in booths. Users appear as avatars of any form. The Metaverse1 project can be viewed as
The ICIS Final Event of January 26th proved a worthy ending of this five-year BSIK program. ICIS aimed to develop better techniques for making complex information systems more intelligent and supportive in decision making situations. Almende presented its contributions on an architecture for hybrid actor agent networks and SENZORG
Almende would like to wish everyone a happy 2010! For Almende, this year means the start of three new projects. One of these is the FP7 project FIT4Green. This project aims at ICT energy reduction. It does that by creating an energy-aware layer of plug-ins for IT data centre automation frameworks. Two other new projects - as mentioned DELIVER and SUPPORT - focus on the improvement of logistic planning.