Affiliations: Institute for Information Technology, National
Research Council, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0R6, Canada. E-mail:
[email protected] | Faculty of Computer Science, University of New
Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada. E-mail: {ghorbani,
bhavsar}@unb.ca
Abstract: ACORN (Agent-based Community Oriented Routing Network) is a
distributed multi-agent architecture for the search, distribution and
management of information in networks. ACORN utilizes the concept of
'information as agent' together with an application of Stanley Milgram's Small
World Problem (the idea of Six Degrees of Separation) in order to route
individual items of information around networks of people and agents. The ACORN
ideal is to achieve a state where a web of users is created such that
information distribution, queries and search, and browsing behaviour are
encapsulated in a single adaptive architecture which learns community behaviour
and knowledge in order to route agents to relevant destinations (users). This paper describes the ACORN architecture and its implementation.
We introduce a novel idea of agent meeting places, or Cafés, to carry out
community-based information sharing among mobile agents in ACORN. ACORN is
compared with similar work, and evaluations of ACORN for information sharing
among mobile agents are described. Applications of ACORN include Business to Business and Business to
Consumer based e-Commerce solutions, virtual community creation and support
systems, peer reviewing systems, and personalized directed information handling
(search, dissemination and growth).
Keywords: multi-agent information architectures, autonomous agents, mobile agents, keyphrase matching, multi-agent architecture, community based information handling, e-Commerce
