Abstract
We address the challenge of multi-agent system (MAS) design for organisations of agents acting in dynamic and uncertain environments where runtime flexibility is required to enable improvisation through sharing knowledge and adapting behaviour. We identify behavioural features that correspond to runtime improvisation by agents in a MAS organisation and from this analysis describe the OJAzzIC meta-model and an associated design method. We present results from simulation scenarios, varying both problem complexity and the level of organisational support provided in the design, to show that increasing design time guidance in the organisation specification can enable runtime flexibility afforded to agents and improve performance. Hence the results demonstrate the usefulness of the constructs captured in the OJAzzIC meta-model.
Highlights
Meta-model [21,22] to a concrete implementation, and to demonstrate how increasing design time guidance in the organisation specification, in particular, using the constructs proposed in the meta-model, can enable runtime flexibility afforded to agents and improve performance
Benefits provided in the OJAzzIC agent organisation meta-model are highlighted based on the behaviour observed in the demonstration multi-agent system (MAS) system
Three key features are identified as providing the designed runtime flexibility—specifying functional solution in terms of tasks and sub-goals that could align with agent capabilities; using policies to make explicit the runtime commitments that agents should adopt to share beliefs and intentions, along with improvisation guidelines; and adopting a runtime coordination model using explicit runtime commitments between agents
Summary
The structure of a human organisation, typically determined through definitions of roles and responsibilities and mechanisms for allocation or selection of tasks, can have great impact on the performance and utility of that organisation [1]. The contributions of this paper are to extend prior conceptual descriptions of the OJAzzIC meta-model [21,22] to a concrete implementation, and to demonstrate how increasing design time guidance in the organisation specification, in particular, using the constructs proposed in the meta-model, can enable runtime flexibility afforded to agents and improve performance We situate this analysis with respect to other prior work on adaptive organisations. We (a) describe limitations of prior research on meta-models for adaptive agent organisations, in particular, OMACS [23], JaCaMo+ [24,25], MOISEinst [26], OperA+ [27,28], and SharedPlans [29]; and (b) provide evidence that the individual and organisational constructs proposed in OJAzzIC can be deployed in practice to yield effective runtime coordination and flexibility This was achieved based on experimentation in a simulated rescue scenario.
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