For the past few years, our research groups have independently been developing systems in which a multi-agent system (typically of lightweight agents) provides some functionality in service of a higher-level system, and often of a higher-level agent in that system. This paper compares our approaches to develop a more generic architecture of which our individual approaches are special cases. We summarize our existing systems, describe this architecture and the characteristics of problems for which it is attractive, and outline an agenda for further research in this area.
H. Van Dyke Parunak, Sven Brueckner, Danny Weyns,