Thesis project class - Ideas for brainstorming

Until the 26th of July of 2005 and during the thesis project class I need to research the state of the art of my research area. I also have to create a thesis work proposal and present both in a report and in a presentation to the students and teachers. After a brief meeting with my supervisor, Professor Eugénio Oliveira and to be able to accomplish those goals I think it is better to sub-divide my thesis in the following areas and research the state of the art for each of them:

• Multi-agent systems (MAS)
  Systems architecture, Agent architecture, cooperation, competition.
  
• Methodologies for MAS
  Gaia, Mase and AUML. Create a summary including advantages and disadvantages and current status.
• JADE
  What's new? Alternatives? Implementation of Jade in .NET?
• Crew-scheduling
  What are the different solutions that have been already implemented. Is it possible to implement them for test and comparison with our solution? Create a summary of the existing ones, their requirements and applications including the advantages and disadvantages of each one.
• Advanced Search Methods
  Constraint Logic Programming, Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, Heuristics and many others. Create a summary of the existing ones, their requirements and applications including the advantages and disadvantages of each one. The idea is to choose the right ones to use.
• Learning
  Which are the methods available? Create a summary of all of them with requirements, applications, advantages and disadvantages.
• Ontology
  Is it necessary to do anything new and different or are we just going to use a ontology that we will define?

Other ideas for discussion

• Generation of partial solutions and how to cooperate in these situations?

Tasks to be performed until the next meeting (18th April 2005 at 4 pm)

• Research in the web and bibliography of the above areas.
• Obtain a data structure and a set of data regarding flights, parings, roster, etc., that are used in TAP.