world domain for AA (Section 2.1) and an initial failed approach that motivates our solution
(Section 2.2).

## 2.1 The Electric Elves

This research was initiated in response to issues that arose in a real application and the resulting approach was extensively tested in the day-to-day running of that application.

The Electric Elves (E-Elves) is a project at USC/ISI to deploy an agent organization in support of the daily activities of a human organization (Pynadath et al., 2000; Chalupsky et al., 2001). We believe this application to be fairly typical of future generation applications involving teams of agents and humans. The operation of a human organization requires the performance of many everyday tasks to ensure coherence in organizational activities, e.g., monitoring the status of activities, gathering information and keeping everyone informed of changes in activities. Teams of software agents can aid organizations in accomplishing these tasks, facilitating coherent functioning and rapid, flexible response to crises. A number of underlying AI technologies support the E-Elves, e.g., technologies devoted to agent-human interactions, agent coordination, accessing multiple heterogeneous information sources, dynamic assignment of organizational tasks, and deriving information about organization members (Chalupsky et al., 2001). While these technologies are useful, AA is fundamental to the effective integration of the E-Elves into the day-to-day running of a real organization and, hence, is the focus of this paper.

The basic design of the E-Elves is shown in Figure 1(a).  Each agent proxy is called Friday (after Robinson Crusoes' man-servant Friday) and acts on behalf of its user in the agent team. The design of the Friday proxies is discussed in detail in  (Tambe, Pynadath, Chauvat, Das, & Kaminka, 2000) (where they are referred to as TEAMCORE proxies). Currently, Friday can perform several tasks for its user. If a user is delayed to a meeting, Friday can reschedule the meeting, informing other Fridays, who in turn inform their users. If there is a research presentation slot open, Friday may respond to the invitation to present on behalf of its user. Friday can also order its user's meals (see Figure 2(a)) and track the user's location, posting it on a Web page. Friday communicates with users using wireless devices, su as personal digital assistants (PALM VIIs) and WAP-enabled mobile phones, and via user workstations. Figure 1(b) shows a PALM VII connected to a Global Positioning Service (GPS) device, for tracking users' locations and enabling wireless communication between Friday and a user. Each Friday's team behavior is based on a teamwork model, called STEAM (Tambe, 1997). STEAM encodes and enforces the constraints between roles that are required for the success of the joint activity, e.g., meeting attendees should arrive at a meeting simultaneously. When a role within the team needs to be filled, STEAM requires that a team member is assigned responsibility for that role. To find the best suited person, the team auctions off the role, allowing it to consider a combination of factors and assign the best suited user. Friday can bid on behalf of its user, indicating whether its user is capable and/or willing to fill a particular role. Figure 2(b) shows a tool that allows users to view auctions in progress and intervene if they so desire. In the auction in progress, Jay Modi's Friday has bid that Jay is capable of giving the presentation, but is unwilling to do so. Paul Scerri's agent has the highest bid and was eventually allocated the role.