<div class="sectionTitle">Information Science Discussion Papers Series: 2008 Abstracts</div>

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<a name="#dp2008-01"></a><h3>2008/01: VoIP application development using SIP protocol</h3>
<h4>D. Milic, D. Zhou and H. Situ</h4>

<p>This aim of this project was to the explore JAIN SLEE standard 1.1 programming model and SIMPLE (Sip for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions)  protocols, developing a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application with functions that include making a phone call, instant messaging to peers, and at the same time providing users with buddy list information of their peers.  The JAIN SLEE platform RhinoSDK 2.0 (developed by OpenCloud) was to be used and an example application that is included with RhinoSDK 2.0 was to be extended.  During the project the phone call functionality was scoped out of the project and the focus was set on implementing the instant messaging and presence functionality.  This report describes the functions that have been implemented on the server side and client side of this VoIP application.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2008-01.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 221 KB)</p>

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<a name="#dp2008-02"></a><h3>2008/02: Report of Otago contributions to Telecom LifeLink Project</h3>
<h4>N. Lewis, H. Situ and M. Middlemiss</h4>

<p>Gartner has for some time been reporting the potential for virtual world technology to become the next wave of the Internet, delivering what is known as the Web3.D environment.  This is characterised by a high level of user participation through immersion in the virtual world. Gartner has predicted that by 2011, 80% of internet users will be regular users of Web3.D technology.</p>

<p>Project LifeLink was initiated to discover what opportunities for Telecom might exist in the growth of business and consumer interest in virtual worlds. This has focused on a number of technologies, in particular Second Life, OpenSimulator (OpenSIM) and JAIN SLEE. The project has been run by Telecom with coordination and support from MediaLab, and with researchers at Canterbury and Otago Universities. This report describes the work undertaken at Otago University to implement a gateway to enable demonstration of communications between an object in Second Life and the JAIN SLEE environment in order to interoperate with external network services.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2008-02.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 1.3 MB)</p>

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<a name="#dp2008-03"></a><h3>2008/03: On the testability of BDI agent systems</h3>
<h4>M. Winikoff and S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>Before deploying a software system we need to assure ourselves (and stake-holders) that the system will behave correctly. This assurance is usually done by testing the system. However, it is intuitively obvious that adaptive systems, including agent-based systems, can exhibit complex behaviour, and are thus harder to test. In this paper we examine this &ldquo;obvious intuition&rdquo; in the case of Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. We analyse the size of the behaviour space of BDI agents and show that although the intuition is correct, the factors that influence the size are not what we expected them to be; specifically, we found that the introduction of failure handling had a much larger effect on the size of the behaviour space than we expected. We also discuss the implications of these findings on the testability of BDI agents.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>testing,
complexity,
validation,
belief-desire-intention (BDI)</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2008-03.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 472 KB)</p>

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<a name="#dp2008-04"></a><h3>2008/04: Partner selection mechanisms for agent cooperation</h3>
<h4>T. Ebadi, M. Purvis and M. Purvis</h4>

<p>In a multi-agent system, a single agent may not be capable of completing complex tasks.  Therefore agents are required to form a team to fulfill the task requirements.  In this paper an agent model is introduced that facilitates cooperation among agents. A multi-threaded multi-agent simulation framework is designed to test the model.  The experimental results demonstrate that the model is significantly useful in achieving cooperation under various environmental constraints.  It also allows agents to adjust their teammate selection strategies according to environmental constraints.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2008-04.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 176 KB)</p>

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<a name="#dp2008-05"></a><h3>2008/05: Vector opinion dynamics: An extended model for consensus in social networks</h3>
<h4>A. Alaali, M. Purvis and B.T.R. Savarimuthu</h4>

<p>Most people hold a variety of opinions on different topics ranging from sports, entertainment, spiritual beliefs to moral principles. These can be based on a personal reflection and evaluation or on their interactions with others. How do we influence others in our social network and how do they influence us and how do we reach consensus? In this paper, we present our investigations based on the use of multiple opinions (a vector of opinions) that should be considered to determine consensus in a society. We have extended Deffuant model and have tested our model on top of two well-known network topologies the Barabasi-Albert network and the Erdos-Renyi network. We have implemented a two phase filtering process determining the consensus.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2008-05.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 696 KB)</p>