Integrating Free-Flow Architectures with Role Models Based on Statecharts

Abstract. Engineering non-trivial open multi-agent systems is a challenging task. Our research focusses on situated multi-agent systems, i.e. systems in which agents are explicitly placed in a context – an environment – which agents can perceive and in which they can act. Two concerns are essential in developing such open systems. First, the agents must be adaptive in order to exhibit suitable behavior in changing circumstances of the system: new agents may join the system, others may leave, the environment may change, e.g. its topology or its characteristics such as throughput and visibility. A well-known family of agent architectures for adaptive behavior are free-flow architectures. However, building a free-flow architecture based on an analysis of the problem domain is a quasi-impossible job for non-trivial agents. Second, multi-agent developers as software engineers require suitable abstractions for describing and structuring agent behavior. The abstraction of a role obvious...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SELMAS
• Authors: Danny Weyns, Elke Steegmans, Tom Holvoet
• Keywords: Adaptive Behavior, Free-flow Architecture, Multi-agent Systems, SELMAS 2004