agents to simulate social human behaviour in a work team agents to simulate social human behaviour...

Agents to Simulate Social Human Agents to Simulate Social Human Behaviour in a Work TeamBehaviour in a Work Team

Barcelona, February 2003.Barcelona, February 2003.

Arantza AldeaArantza Aldea

aaldea@etse.urv.esaaldea@etse.urv.es

SSPAINPAIN

Research ActivitiesResearch Activities

Applications of AI to industry– Multi-Agent Systems– Ontology-Based Search & Information

Extraction– Model-Based Reasoning

Multi-Agent SystemsMulti-Agent Systems

Information Society – AgentCities

Simulation of work teams

Agents to simulate social behaviourAgents to simulate social behaviour

Introduction: Team Configuration

The Model: General Architecture Internal Architecture of the Agents. Tasks Representation Organisation Level

The Prototype

Future Work

Conclusions

IntroductionIntroduction

• In any complex project that requires several people working together, the configuration of the best possible team within the working constraints, is a difficult task (Biegler et al. 1997).

• Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems can be used to simulate the human behaviour:

Emotions and Personality Sociability Groups Organisation

• Case Study: selection of people to integrate a team in charge of the conceptual design of a chemical process.

Brief DescriptionBrief Description

Working teamselection

Group behavioursimulation

Best teamselection

Add/deleteindividuals

Workingteamcases Finish?

ProjectManager

Design problem

new working team

Proposed working team

working team

no

yes

Simulation of societies

The Model: General ArchitectureThe Model: General Architecture

The Team Simulation Process.

SocialStatus

Cognition

Perception

Behaviour Actor

Basic Architecture of PECS Agents. (Urban 2000)

Sensor

Emotion Physics

The Model: Agents ArchitectureThe Model: Agents Architecture

SocialStatus

Cognition

Perception

Behaviour Actor

PECS Modified Architecture.

Emotion / Personality

The Model: Agents ArchitectureThe Model: Agents Architecture

Cognition. Project Manager Chemical Engineer Technician Assistant

Creativity

Experience

Social Status.

Introverted / Extroverted Prefers to work in team / Prefers to work alone

Sociologists, psychologists.

Internal Parameters of the AgentsInternal Parameters of the Agents

}

Emotion / Personality. Desire } Frijda 1986 Interest Disgust Anxiety } Johnson-Laird 1992

Stress

Amiable Expressive Analytical Driver

S. Schubert, Leadership Connections Inc. 1997

} Izard 1991}

Personality TrendsPersonality Trends

Amiable.

Priority: RelationshipsSpeciality: Support; “We’re all in this together so let’s work as a team”

Expressive.

Priority: RelationshipsSpeciality: Socialising; “Let me tell what happened to me...”

Analytical.

Priority: The taskSpeciality: Processes; systems; “Can you provide documentation for your claims?”

Driver.

Priority: The taskSpeciality: Being in control; “I want it done right and I want it done now.”

BEGINTASK 1 TASK 2

TASK 3

TASK 4

TASK 5

TASK 6

TASK 7

TASK 8

...TASK N

END

Number of Participants

Duration

Sequence

Difficulty of the Task

Type of Task

Deadline

Priority

Cost

Quality

The Model: Tasks RepresentationThe Model: Tasks Representation

Differents organisation types will be tested:

S in Jera rq u ías

C en tra lizad aA rb o lTree Hierarchy

Centralised Hierarchy

Without Hierarchies

The Model: Organisation LevelThe Model: Organisation Level

The Model: Agent BehaviourThe Model: Agent Behaviour

2

2

2

)(

2

1)( s

mx

es

xf

m s

The agent behaviour emerges by evaluating values of its internal properties, randomly modified around the initial values of each of the properties.

Normal distribution with mean m (internal value of the agent, e.g. stress, interest, etc.) and standard deviation s

These random variations are due to the non-deterministic nature of human behaviour

Three Dimensions to Evaluate a Team:Three Dimensions to Evaluate a Team:

Number of Members.

Agents with Different Characteristics.

Type of Organisations.

The Model: Team Evaluation The Model: Team Evaluation

Configuration Component

Team Configuration

Tasks Configuration

Simulation Component

Selection of Weight Agent Internal Parameters

Number of Simulations

Results Component

Show Team Behaviour

Graphical Statistics (future work)

The Prototype: Main ComponentsThe Prototype: Main Components

The Prototype: User InterfacesThe Prototype: User Interfaces

TasksConfiguration

Selection of Weight Agent Internal Parameters

Use of JADE 2.5Use of JADE 2.5

The Prototype: Initial ResultsThe Prototype: Initial Results

Team Members

1 Project Manager

3 Engineers

3 Technicians

3 Assistants

Example Configuration:Example Configuration:

Project

12 Different tasks

Number of simulations

100

Organisation

Centralised Hierarchy

The Prototype: Initial ResultsThe Prototype: Initial Results

Agents with high stress and in charge of a specialised task were the agents with more failures

Decreasing the stress parameter and executing the same number of simulations, the number of failures also decreased

Agents with an amiable personality and working in a task by themselves had more failures than successes

The most successful agents contains a high experience and analytical personality.

The creativity parameter only increases the number of successes when the agent is in charge of specialised tasks.

We observe that:We observe that:

We are evaluating Fuzzy Logic to improve the agents behaviour.

More studies at organisation level: social characteristics, co-ordination, re-organisation, etc.

Implementation of other types of team co-ordination: tree hierarchical organisation, and no hierarchy

Validate the experimental results by comparing them with human teams

Unexpected events: how external factors affect the team behaviour

Future WorkFuture Work

Things to do...Things to do...

At the end ...At the end ...

ConclusionsConclusions

Emotions, Personality, Stress

Different Organisation

Types

Social Characteristics

SimulationProcess

... help the project manager ... help the project manager to select the most suitable to select the most suitable team members for a team members for a specific project.specific project.