Service-Provider Agents for Automated Collaborative Problem Solving
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Solution Overview
Problem
In multi-disciplinary work environments, especially in life sciences and healthcare, there is a challenge in achieving effective collaboration, integration, and automation across diverse teams, departments, and geographies due to the complexity of consolidating IT advancements with domain expertise, and existing solutions require manual intervention and resource wrapping for interoperability.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus for collaborative problem solving in a distributed data processing network using software agents that identify and allocate tasks to resources capable of providing required services, generating a task allocation and execution sequence, and executing tasks dynamically, thereby facilitating automated discovery and integration of capabilities without the need for constant user involvement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If manual intervention and resource wrapping are used for interoperability, then integration between diverse teams and systems is achieved, but system complexity and time consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces service-provider agents as intermediary components that mediate between diverse resources and service requestors. These agents provide standardized access mechanisms and capability descriptions, enabling interoperability without requiring manual wrapping of each resource. The agents act as intermediaries that translate between different resource interfaces and unified service access points.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal service access framework where service-provider agents provide standardized interfaces for accessing diverse underlying resources. The capability description mechanism and task allocation system serve multiple functions: resource discovery, capability matching, task distribution, and execution coordination, replacing multiple specialized integration mechanisms with a single universal system.
2Extent of automation
If service-provider agents and automated task allocation are implemented, then automation and collaboration efficiency improve, but the initial system setup and coordination complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where service-provider agents automatically describe their capabilities, service requestors autonomously discover and evaluate available services, and the system automatically performs task allocation and execution without human intervention. The agents independently negotiate and coordinate their activities based on capability descriptions and task requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates feedback loops where service-provider agents report their capabilities and execution status, service requestors evaluate service performance, and the system uses this information to improve future task allocations. The capability description mechanism provides continuous feedback about resource availability and performance, enabling adaptive coordination.
3Productivity
If capabilities are abstractly represented and dynamically discovered, then resource utilization and collaboration efficiency improve, but information processing and matching complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts essential capability information from diverse resources and represents it in a standardized, abstract format through service-provider agents. The capability descriptions extract key functional characteristics, input/output requirements, and performance metrics from heterogeneous resources, presenting them through a unified interface that simplifies discovery and matching processes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms capability representations from concrete, resource-specific descriptions into abstract, standardized parameters that can be uniformly processed and compared. The capability description mechanism changes the parameter representation from detailed implementation-specific attributes to standardized functional parameters, enabling efficient matching and allocation.
Data Source
AI summary
Provided are methods, apparatus or computer programs for collaborative problem solving and/or automated discovery and dynamic integration of capabilities in a distributed, multidisciplinary work environment. A set of software-implemented agents distributed across a network are used to identify agents and resources on the network that are capable of performing required tasks. The agents collaborate to generate a plan comprising a task allocation and task execution sequence in which tasks are allocated to selected ones of the agents and identified resources, and then the selected agents and resources execute the allocated tasks in accordance with the generated plan. Services (such as processing functions and knowledge) provided by hardware and software resources in a network are represented as ‘capabilities’ of an associated agent. The functions implemented by each agent are also represented as ‘capabilities’. The abstract ‘capabilities’ can be published and then discovered and dynamically integrated to solve domain specific problems.