Pattie Maes

JAAMAS Journal 2026 Journal Article

Amalthaea: An Evolving Multi-Agent Information Filtering and Discovery System for the WWW

• Alexandros Moukas
• Pattie Maes

Abstract Amalthaea is an evolving, multi-agent ecosystem for personalized filtering, discovery, and monitoring of information sites. Amalthaea's primary application domain is the World Wide Web and its main purpose is to assist its users in finding interesting information. Two different categories of agents are introduced in the system: filtering agents that model and monitor the interests of the user and discovery agents that model the information sources. A market-like ecosystem where the agents evolve, compete, and collaborate is presented: agents that are useful to the user or other agents reproduce, while low-performing agents are destroyed. Results from various experiments with different system configurations and varying ratios of user interests versus agents in the system are presented. Finally issues like fine-tuning the initial parameters of the system and establishing and maintaining equilibria in the ecosystem are discussed.

AAAI Conference 2021 Short Paper

Robustness to Missing Features using Hierarchical Clustering with Split Neural Networks (Student Abstract)

• Rishab Khincha
• Utkarsh Sarawgi
• Wazeer Zulfikar
• Pattie Maes

The problem of missing data has been persistent for a long time and poses a major obstacle in machine learning and statistical data analysis. Past works in this field have tried using various data imputation techniques to fill in the missing data, or training neural networks (NNs) with the missing data. In this work, we propose a simple yet effective approach that clusters similar input features together using hierarchical clustering and then trains proportionately split neural networks with a joint loss. We evaluate this approach on a series of benchmark datasets and show promising improvements even with simple imputation techniques. We attribute this to learning through clusters of similar features in our model architecture.

JBHI Journal 2019 Journal Article

Wearable Motion-Based Heart Rate at Rest: A Workplace Evaluation

• Javier Hernandez
• Daniel McDuff
• Karen Quigley
• Pattie Maes
• Rosalind W. Picard

This paper studies the feasibility of using low-cost motion sensors to provide opportunistic heart rate assessments from ballistocardiographic signals during restful periods of daily life. Three wearable devices were used to capture peripheral motions at specific body locations (head, wrist, and trouser pocket) of 15 participants during five regular workdays each. Three methods were implemented to extract heart rate from motion data and their performance was compared to those obtained with an FDA-cleared device. With a total of 1358 h of naturalistic sensor data, our results show that providing accurate heart rate estimations from peripheral motion signals is possible during relatively “still” moments. In our real-life workplace study, the head-mounted device yielded the most frequent assessments (22. 98% of the time under 5 beats per minute of error) followed by the smartphone in the pocket (5. 02%) and the wrist-worn device (3. 48%). Most importantly, accurate assessments were automatically detected by using a custom threshold based on the device jerk. Due to the pervasiveness and low cost of wearable motion sensors, this paper demonstrates the feasibility of providing opportunistic large-scale low-cost samples of resting heart rate.

KER Journal 1998 Journal Article

Agent-mediated electronic commerce: a survey

• ROBERT H. GUTTMAN
• ALEXANDROS G. MOUKAS
• Pattie Maes

Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved in buying and selling products over the Internet. This paper surveys several of these agent-mediated electronic commerce systems by describing their roles in the context of a Consumer Buying Behavior (CBB) model. The CBB model we present augments traditional marketing models with concepts from Software Agents research to accommodate electronic markets. We then discuss the variety of Artificial Intelligence techniques that support agent mediation and conclude with future directions of agent-mediated electronic commerce research.

AAAI Conference 1994 Conference Paper

ALIVE: Artificial Life Interactive Video Environment

• Pattie Maes
• Bruce Blumberg

In this video we demonstrate a novel system which allows wireless full-body interaction between a 'human participant and a graphical world inhabited by autonomous agents. The system is called "ALIVE", an acronym for Artificial Life Interactive Video Environment. The goal of ALIVE is to present a virtual environment in which a user can interact, in natural and believable ways, with autonomous semi-intelligent agents whose behavior is equally natural and believable.

AAAI Conference 1993 Conference Paper

Learning Interface Agents

• Pattie Maes

Interface agents are computer programs that employ Artificial Intelligence techniques in order to provide assistance to a user dealing with a particular computer application. The paper discusses an interface agent which has been modelled closely after the metaphor of a personal assistant. The agent learns how to assist the user by (i) observing the user’ s actions and imitating them, (ii) receiving user feedback when it takes wrong actions and (iii) being trained by the user on the basis of hypothetical examples. The paper discusses how this learning agent was implemented using memory-based learning and reinforcement learning techniques. It presents actual results from two prototype agents built using these techniques: one for a meeting scheduling application and one for electronic mail. It argues that the machine learning approach to building interface agents is a feasible one which has several advantages over other approaches: it provides a customized and adaptive solution which is less costly and ensures better user acceptability. The paper also argues what the advantages are of the particular learning techniques used.

AAAI Conference 1990 Conference Paper

Learning to Coordinate Behaviors

• Pattie Maes

IROS Conference 1990 Conference Paper

Lunar base construction robots

• Rodney A. Brooks
• Pattie Maes
• Maja J. Mataric
• Grinell More

President Bush called for the construction of a permanently manned lunar base. All serious plans for such a base require the use of lunar soil as shielding material against the Sun's radiation. Plans rely on the use of a large bulldozer-like vehicle to be driven by an astronaut, either locally or under teleoperation control. Brooks and Flynn (89) proposed an alternate approach to a single large and complex robot based on many small totally autonomous robots which trade off time to achieve the task with lowered complexity and cost of the system. In this paper the authors describe an experimental system they are building with 20 small bulldozers, which work without explicit coordination or communication, but nevertheless cooperate to achieve tasks that will be useful in building a manned lunar base. In particular the authors believe such tasks as digging out trenches in which the habitation units will be placed, stockpiling a supply of loose lunar soil to cover the habitation units, and actually covering them when delivered, can all be carried out by such small bulldozers.

KER Journal 1988 Journal Article

Computational reflection

• Pattie Maes

Abstract Computational reflection is the activity performed by a computational System when reasoning about (and by that possibly affecting) itself. This paper presents an introduction to computational reflection (thereafter called reflection). A definition of reflection is presented, its utility for knowledge engineering is discussed and architectures of languages that support it are studied. Examples of such procedural, logic-based, rule-based and object-oriented languages are presented. The paper elaborates on the design of these languages and the reflective functionality that results, elucidating concepts such as procedural reflection, declarative reflection, theory relativity of reflection, etc. The paper concludes with an assessment of outstanding problems and future developments in the area.

ECAI Conference 1987 Conference Paper

Introspection in Knowledge Representation

• Pattie Maes