The Institute will focus on the computer technology of agents and agent-based systems. Agents are software entities or software-hardware combinations (e.g., robots) that sense the world, decide how to behave based on their perceptions, and take action to influence the world. Agent-based systems are designed using the idea of modules interacting with one another as autonomous or semi-autonomous agents.

This emerging ``paradigm'' in computer science has the potential to radically alter the way computer systems are built and operate. As one leading researcher has noted, agent-based technology provides a ``powerful set of tools, techniques, and metaphors that has the potential to redefine the way people interact with and build software''.*

The Agent Institute will bring together researchers and developers in Maine who are working on agent-based systems and related technologies to identify fruitful areas for collaboration and to facilitate the resulting collaborative ties. Such cooperative partnerships will increase Maine's ability to obtain federal research funds. The Institute will identify those industries and others who would benefit from agent-based systems, make them aware of the emerging agents R&D community in the state, and bring them together with the investigators to foster needs-driven research and development and technology transfer.

The Institute will also serve an outreach and education mission. It will strive to make the public aware of the agent-based research that is going on in the state and of the promise of such research. It will contact and encourage its members to contact K-12 educators and schools with the goal of interesting children in careers related to agent-based systems and high technology in general.