Dr. Brian Logan
Associate Professor
School of Computer Science
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG8 1BB UK
Phone: +44-115-846-6509
Fax: +44-115-951-4254
Email: bsl@cs.nott.ac.uk
Office: C34
RESEARCH
My research interests lie in the area of
agent systems, and
spans the specification, design and implementation of agents, including
agent architectures, agent programming languages and logics and theories
for agent-based systems. I am also interested in applications
of agents, particularly in virtual environments and in simulation.
I am a member of the Agents
Lab and the Mixed Reality
Laboratory.
Current projects
- Verification of Resource-Bounded Multi-Agent Systems (VRBMAS).
Agents need resources to act: actions may require energy, time to
complete, and other resources depending on the application domain, for
example, money. A multi-agent system will have very different
behaviours depending on the resource endowment of the agents that
comprise it. The aim of this project is to develop tools and
techniques for verification of multi-agent systems that explicitly
take into account the agents' resource limitations and requirements.
This is a collaborative project
with Dr Franco Raimondi at the University of Middlesex. The project is
funded by the EPSRC as project number EP/E031226.
- Evolvable Assembly Systems - Towards Open, Adaptable and
Context-Aware Equipment and Systems (EAS).
Assembly of final products in sectors such as automotive, aerospace,
pharmaceutical and medical industries is a key production process in
high labour cost areas such as the UK. To respond to the current
challenges manufacturers need to transform current capital-intensive
assembly lines into smart systems that can react to external and
internal changes and can self-heal, self-adapt and reconfigure.
Consequently, there is a need for a radically new approach towards
development of future assembly systems able to continuously evolve to
respond to changes in product requirements and demand with extremely
short set-up times combined with low cost of maintenance, system
reconfiguration and capability upgrade with emerging new technologies.
As the level and type of automation changes, future assembly systems
will also require a different type of engagement of human operators in
hybrid decision-making, monitoring and system adaptation.
The aim of the EAS project is to is to define and validate the vision
and support architecture, theoretical models, methods and algorithms
for Evolvable Assembly Systems as a new platform for open,
adaptable, context-aware and cost effective production.
EAS is a 2.15m project involving the Division of Manufacturing and the
School of Computer Science funded by the EPSRC as project number EP/K018205/1.
- Cloud Manufacturing - Towards Resilient and Scalable High Value
Manufacturing.
The Cloud Manufacturing project investigates how digital technologies
can enable ‘on demand’ cloud manufacturing. This means replacing high
capital expenditures with pay-as-you-go manufacturing services and
through-life support, which radically transforms the economics of new
product information, volume manufacturing and lifecycle management.
Cloud Manufacturing is a 2.36m project involving the Division of
Manufacturing and the School of Computer Science funded by the EPSRC
as project number EP/K014161/1.
Information about previous projects can be found
here, and a list of publications here.
PhD students
- Sam Leask Concurrency and parallelism in agent architectures
- Yuan Yao Tractable deliberation in agent
programming languages
- Daniela Dybalova Autonomy and context in human-agent collectives
Previous PhD students
- Elizabeth Gordon Real-time Agent Architectures for
Believable Worlds (graduated 2005)
- Mike Lees Adaptive Optmistic Simulation of Agent
Based Systems (graduated 2006)
- Dan Fielding Agents Reporting from Collaborative
Virtual Environments (co-supervised with Steve Benford,
graduated 2007)
-
Mark Jago Logics for Resource Bounded Agents
(co-supervised with Natasha Alechina, graduated 2006)
- Neil Madden Multi-agent reporting on events in
persistent virtual environments (graduated 2009)
- Nguyen Hoang Nga Verifying requirements for
resource-bounded reasoners (first supervisor Natasha Alechina,
graduated 2011)
- Abdur Rakib Verifying requirements for
resource-bounded reasoners (graduated 2011)
- Konstantin Vikhorev Real-time guarantees in high-level agent
programming languages (graduated 2011)
- Trang Doan Thu Procedural reflection in agent
prgramming languages (graduated 2014)
- Julian Zappala Agent-based models of group decsion making (graduated 2014)
- Hai Nguyen Belief revision for ontologies
(first supervisor Natasha Alechina, graduated 2014)
- Liu Xiaofan Analysis and verification of business
rules (first supervisor Natasha Alechina, graduated 2015)
I am always happy to consider PhD applications from suitably qualified
candidates.
TEACHING
In this session I am teaching
G52ACE
Algorithms Correctness and Efficiency (with Andrew Parkes)
and G53DIA Designing Intelligent Agents. For
more information, see
the G52ACE
and G53DIA moodle pages.
Dissertation Projects (G53IDA, G53IDE,
G53IDJ, G53IDR, G53IDS, G53IDY)
I am mostly interested in Artificial Intelligence problems, and I am
happy to supervise projects in (almost) any area of AI. I have produced
some suggestions for
projects as a starting point, but I am happy to discuss other topics
if there is an AI or general CS project you would like to do.
MSc Dissertation Projects (G64PIT, G64PMI, G54PRO, HG4SCD)
Some suggested topics suitable for MSc projects can be
found here. However if you
have your own idea for a topic, I'd be happy to discuss it.
Other Teaching
In previous sessions I have taught:
I have also given courses at various summer schools, mostly in the
area of logic and agents, e.g.:
- Verification of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, at the
European Agent
Systems Summer School (EASSS 2016)
in Catania, July 25-29 2016
- Multi-Agent Programming, at the
Midlands Graduate
School in the Foundations of Computing Science (MGS 2013)
in Leicester, April 8-12 2013
- Logics and Multi-Agent Programming Languages, a tutorial at the
Eleventh International Conference
on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2012)
in Valencia, June 4-8 2012
- Logics and Agent Programming Languages at the
23rd European Summer School in
Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2011)
in Ljubljana, August 8-12 2011
- Logics and Agent Programming Languages at the
21st European Summer School in
Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2009)
in Bordeaux, July 27-31 2009
- Designing Intelligent Agents at the
European Agent
Systems Summer School, in Turin, 31 August - 4 September 2009
Brief Biography
Prior to coming to Nottingham, I was a lecturer in Artificial
Intelligence in the School of
Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. I have also worked
at the
Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies on architectural
CAD systems, the Computer Laboratory
at the University of Cambridge on computational models of belief
revision and the Department of
Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh on design
support systems.
From 1999 to 2008 I was an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
This file is maintained by Brian
Logan