This paper aims to show that Intelligent Products may be used to facilitate closed-loop reverse logistics processes. An analysis of the actors and processes in reverse logistics processes is presented to identify requirements towards the characteristics of a technical concept suitable to support closed-loop reverse logistics processes. That Intelligent Products fulfill the requirements is shown...

Although there is still no killer application identified for Mobile and Intelligent Agents, today Agent technology is considered to form an important part of flexible middleware platforms. A main issue in this context is the integration of Mobile and Intelligent Agent Technology, as well as Distributed Object Technology, e.g., the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). This is parti...

We introduce the possibility of direct punishment by specialized enforcers into a model of community enforcement. Specialized enforcers need to be given incentives to carry out costly punishments. Our main result shows that, when the specialized enforcement technology is suffi ciently effective, cooperation is best sustained by a “one-time enforcer punishment equilibrium,” where any deviation b...

Without an environment, an agent is effectively useless. Cut off from the rest of its world, the agent can neither sense nor act. An environment provides the conditions under which an entity (agent or object) can exist. It defines the properties of the world in which an agent will function. Designing effective agents requires careful consideration of both the physical and communicational aspect...

How do we construct credible personalities? The current SAL (Sensitive Artificial Listeners) characters were constructed intuitively and can be unconvincing. In addressing these issues, this paper considers a theory of personality and associated emotional traits, and discusses how behaviours associated with personality types in people may be adapted to develop characteristics of virtual agents....

Biological organisms use a combination of attention and arousal to control the amount of sensory data being sent to their central nervous system’s higher order processing. We propose using what neuroscience has learned about these natural mechanisms to construct a biologically inspired model of how sensor input can be filtered and fused in a large-scale DAI system. We then show how this model c...

We show how an agent can acquire conceptual knowledge by sensorimotor interaction with its environment. The method has much in common with the notion of image-schemas, which are central to Mandler’s theory of conceptual development. We show that Mandler’s approach is feasible in an artificial agent.

The paper presents a model for the construction of an artificial agent that can express performatives through facial expression. The performative of a speech act or communicative act is the particular communicative intention a Sender has to one's Addressee, the way one wants to socially relate oneself to the interlocutor. Performatives are decomposed both on the meaning and on the signal side: ...