Scalable MAS-Based Control Systems Using QoS-Adaptive Coordination Artifacts

Coordination Artifacts are first-class software entities that encapsulate an abstract communication pattern either among Agents or between an Agent and its environment. By separating Coordination Artifacts from Agents in a Multi-Agent System (MAS), both implementations are simplified: Coordination Artifacts become an ideal means for dealing with systemic issues, while the remaining Agent code can focus solely on the application domain logic. Specialized Coordination Artifacts can potentially adjust their behavior to meet changing Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, making them excellent candidates to apply to the problem of managing and administering large-scale, physical systems. Using previous research experience in the Ultralog project for providing robust large-scale agent systems, we investigate implementing QoS-adaptation techniques as Coordination Artifacts. In this paper, we present a design for such QoS-adaptive Coordination Artifacts implemented using the Cougaar agent middleware, and show how such structures can combine to form a robust MAS-based control system.