A Multiagent Framework for Collaborative Conceptual Learning Using a Dempster-Shafer Belief System
Leen‐Kiat Soh · 2002
In this paper, we describe a multiagent framework for col-laborative conceptual earning using a Dempster-Shafer be-lief system in the domain of information retrieval. In our multiagent system, each agent maintains a database of docu-ments, entertains different queries from its users, and thus learns a unique dictionary of concepts. Filed for each con-cept is a set of keywords collected from the documents sup-porting that concept. A document may be filed under various concepts and thus concepts may share keywords. This pro-vides for a metric to evaluate the relevance of a document to a query. Our proposed work enables the query of an agent to be composed at a conceptual evel or expanded at a concep-tual level, justified by a set of keywords, and to be learned by other agents through communications. The learned concepts are stored in each agent’s unique translation table. In this manner, agents are able to evolve independently their own knowledge while maintaining translation tables through col-laborative learning to help sustain the information retrieval process.