Software Engineering students from the University of Southampton have finished second in the International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition with a striking entry based on their degree coursework.

Meng Wan and Hui Cui designed the autonomous negotiation agent during the Intelligent Agents module of their MSc Software Engineering degree. They subsequently upgraded the creation, known as meng wan or Agent 36, before entering at July’s International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018) in Stockholm, Sweden.

The agent was one of 21 competitors representing 10 universities from eight countries in the ninth annual tournament, a prominent stage for evaluating practical negotiation strategies in multi-issue domains.

Associate Professor Dr Enrico Gerding, a lecturer for the Intelligent Agents module, said: “I’m very pleased about the success of our MSc students at one of the most prestigious artificial intelligence conferences. It shows the quality of the students and our research-led teaching in artificial intelligence. In particular, the Agents, Interaction and Complexity (AIC) research group is one of the world leading groups in the area of intelligent agents, and this is reflected in our teaching.â€?

Meng and Hui were awarded a €650 travel scholarship for reaching the contest’s final and secured a further €200 cash prize for their second place ranking in the Individual Utility group. Their Repeated Multilateral Negotiation League category was won by AgreeableAgent2018 by Sahar Mirzayi from the University of Tehran, Iran.

Southampton’s Intelligent Agents teaching offers students a broad introduction to the new and rapidly expanding field of agent-based computing. Particular emphasis is placed on automated negotiation, cooperation and on-line auctions, and students are required to program a trading agent in Java which competes in a class tournament within a simulated trading environment.

The module is taught by experts from the AIC Group, which is led by Professor Tim Norman. The research group investigates the science and engineering of complex socio�technical, socio�economic and socio�ecological systems that underpin the most pressing challenges currently facing society.

Dozens of A-Level Computer Science and Physics teachers have been trained on two interactive circuit boards from the University of Southampton that could help inspire the next generation of electronics engineers.

Over 70 teachers attended expanded professional development workshops at Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) in July, where they were introduced to new hands-on activities that join efforts to address a skills shortage in the electronics sector.

Southampton experts have developed Music Mixer and Logic and Arithmetic circuit boards that will be introduced to thousands of A-Level Computer Science and Physics pupils in the new academic year.

Dr Alex Weddell, Teachers Workshop Leader, said: “This year’s events have been tremendously successful, meaning that our kits will shortly be in the hands of over 100 schools around the UK. The classroom kits have a real legacy: they can be used in several classes every year. Rather than using stuffy kit in grey boxes, they expose A-level students to real electronic circuits and systems.

“It’s great to see that the feedback about the kits and the training, held in our own teaching labs, has been so positive. We are looking to run similar events next summer and to get the kits into the hands of even more schools. I’d like to encourage teachers, or organisations that would like to support the scheme as it goes forward, to register their interest by joining our mailing list.â€?

The circuit boards have been developed in partnership with the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF), with a successful pilot over the past year prompting dozens of classroom sets to be distributed to connected schools.

Stew Edmondson, UKESF CEO, said: “This project, which aims to provide schools with resources to teach electronics as part of the A-Level curriculum, is proving to be a tremendous success. With initial funding from The IET and now with generous support from the ERA Foundation and some of our partner companies, it has grown significantly this year. The feedback from teachers has been excellent and we are delighted with its effectiveness in promoting electronics.â€?

The music mixer circuit board combines audio signals to allow students to experiment with different electronic components. The Logic and Arithmetic kit incorporates core electronics concepts, in particular covering aspects of Boolean operations, logic gates and base 2 (binary) number systems. The two kits are not currently available to purchase, but limited numbers are being provided to schools for free.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Engineering and Physics Sciences, added: “School teachers have a vital role to play in encouraging more young people into science and engineering careers and the annual ECS Teachers Workshops aim to train hundreds of A-level Physics and Computer Science teachers in the coming years from across the country. We are delighted to host them within our state-of-the-art laboratories, working alongside our academic and technical staff.â€?

Teachers, or organisations that would like to support the scheme as it goes forward, can register their interest in the project by joining the Outreach Kits Mailing List.