Supervision : Jean-Pierre BRIOT

Co-supervision : MALENFANT Jacques

Replication heuristics for agents fault tolerance: a plan-based approach

The growing importance of multiagent applications and the need for a higher quality of service in these systems justify the increasing interest in fault-tolerant multiagent systems. In this thesis, we propose an original method for providing dependability in multiagent systems through replication. Our method is different from other works because our research focuses on automatically building an adaptive and predictive replication policy. This replication policy is determined by taking into account the criticality of the agents and the reliability of the machines. We define the criticality as a value (evolving in time) associated to each agent in order to reflect the effects of its failure on the overall system. This value is calculated using the plans of the agents, which contain the collective and individual behaviours of the agents in the application. We also propose the underlying mechanisms of allocation and placement of the available replication resources. For that, we formalize the problem of resource allocation which consists of deciding which replication resources must be allocated to each agent in order to maximize the reliability of the system. Moreover, the set of replication policies applied at a given moment to the agents is fine-tuned gradually by the replication control module so as to reflect the dynamicity of the system.

2002-2008 Publications

• 2008
  • A. De Luna Almeida : “Replication heuristics for agents fault tolerance: a plan-based approach”, thesis, phd defence 07/07/2008, supervision Briot, Jean-Pierre, co-supervision : Malenfant, Jacques (2008)
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot : “Dynamic resource allocation heuristics for providing fault tolerance in multiagent systems”, 23^rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'08), Fortaleza, CE, Brazil, pp. 66-70, (ACM) (2008)
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot, N. Habibi, L. Arantes : “Heuristiques d’allocation dynamique de ressources pour la fiabilisation des systèmes multi-agents”, Actes du 6^e AFRIF-AFIA congrès francophone de reconnaissance des formes et intelligence artificielle (RFIA'08), Amiens, France (2008)
• 2007
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot : “Plan-Based Resource Allocation for Providing Fault Tolerance in Multi-agent Systems”, 3^rd Workshop on Software Engineering for Agent-oriented Systems (SEAS'2007), João Pessoa, PB, Brazil, pp. 3-14, (Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (SBC), Brazil) (2007)
  • A. De Luna Almeida, J.‑P. Briot, S. Aknine, Z. Guessoum, O. Marin : “Towards autonomic fault-tolerant multi-agent systems”, 2^nd Latin American Autonomic Computing Symposium (LAACS'07), Petropolis, RJ, Brazil (2007)
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot, J. Malenfant : “Predictive Fault Tolerance in Multi-Agent Systems: a Plan-Based Replication Approach”, International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'07) - Poster Session, Honolulu, Hawai, United States, pp. 672-673, (ACM Press) (2007)
• 2006
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot, J. Malenfant : “A Predictive Method for Providing Fault Tolerance in Multi-agent Systems”, IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'2006), Hong Kong, Hong Kong, pp. 226-232, (IEEE) (2006)
  • J.‑P. Briot, Z. Guessoum, S. Aknine, A. De Luna Almeida, N. Faci, J. Malenfant, O. Marin, P. Sens : “Engineering Control Strategies for Replication-Based Fault-Tolerant Multi-Agent Systems”, International Workshop on Engineering of Fault-Tolerant Systems (EFTS'2006), Luxembourg, Luxembourg, pp. 80-93 (2006)
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot, J. Malenfant : “Plan-Based Replication for Fault-Tolerant Multi-Agent Systems”, 11^th IEEE Workshop on Dependable Parallel, Distributed and Network-Centric Systems (DPDNS), satellite of the 20^th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2006), Rhodes Island, Greece, pp. 413-418, (IEEE - Fraunhofer AIS) (2006)
  • J.‑P. Briot, Z. Guessoum, S. Aknine, A. De Luna Almeida, J. Malenfant, O. Marin, P. Sens, N. Faci, M. Gatti, C. Lucena : “Experience and Prospects for Various Control Strategies for Self-Replicating Multi-Agent Systems”, SEAMS 2006 - 1^st International Workshop on Software Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems, Shanghai, China, pp. 37-43, (ACM) (2006)
• 2005
  • A. De Luna Almeida, S. Aknine, J.‑P. Briot, J. Malenfant : “Une approche de réplication fondée sur les plans pour la tolérance aux fautes des systèmes multi-agents”, JFSMA 2005 - 13^es Journées Francophones sur les Systèmes Multi-Agents, Calais, France, pp. 183-186, (Revue des Sciences et Technologies de l'Information (RSTI)) (2005)
• 2004
  • A. De Luna Almeida, G. Ramalho, H. Santana, P. Tedesco, T. Menezes, V. Corruble, Y. Chevaleyre : “Recent advances on multi-agent patrolling”, 17^th Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3171, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, São Luís, Brazil, pp. 474-483, (Springer) (2004)
• 2002
  • A. Pamponet Machado, A. De Luna Almeida, G. Ramalho, J.‑D. Zucker, A. Drogoul : “Multi-Agent Movement Coordination in Patrolling”, First Workshop on Agents in Computer Games, at The 3^rd International Conference on Computers and Games (CG'02), Edmonton, Canada (2002)