Mirgita Frasheri (not working at IDT anymore)


Mirgita Frasheri is a PhD student in the Robotics group at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. Mirgita received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania in 2012 and 2014 respectively. After graduation, in 2015 she started her PhD studies at Mälardalen University. In 2018 Mirgita defended her Licentiate thesis, titled "Collaborative Adaptive Autonomous Agents". Mirgita's research topic covers adaptive autonomy, agent frameworks, and collaboration between agents.

Intelligent agents are usually defined as autonomous software entities capable of perceiving and acting on 
their environment, with various degrees of learning and adaptation skills, which may or not be embodied, i.e. 
having a physical a body through which to act. The element of autonomy can refer to degrees of self-
sufficiency (ability to do a task without help) and self-directedness (ability to decide on ones own goals). 
Moreover, autonomy can be defined in terms of dependence theory. It states that in case an agent A
lacks a means to achieve a goal and depends on another agent B for it, then A is not 
autonomous from B with respect to that means. Also, dependencies between agents may change during 
run-time, thus their autonomy also changes. Adaptive autonomy (AA) allows agents to decide on their own 
autonomy levels based on specific circumstances. This research tackles the problem of determining when an 
agent should change its autonomy and enter into collaboration with other agents. To this end, firstly, a high-
level agent framework is proposed which models the agent's internal operation. Secondly, the adaptive 
autonomous behavior is achieved by introducing the parameter of willingness to interact, composed of the 
willingness to ask for and give assistance. The willingness to interact defines both aspects of an interaction. 
In order to calculate the willingness, a mathematical model is being developed.