Applications of Self-Organising Multi-Agent Systems: An Initial Framework for Comparison

A lot of work is devoted to formalizing and devising architectures for agents' cooperative behaviour, for coordinating the behaviour of individual agents within groups, as well as to designing agent societies using social laws. However, providing agents with abilities to automatically devise societies so as to form coherent emergent groups that coordinate their behaviour via social laws, is highly challenging. These systems are called self-organised. We are beginning to understand some of the ways in which self-organised agent systems can be devised. In this perspective, this paper provides several examples of multi-agent systems in which self-organisation, based on different mechanisms, is used to solve complex problems. Several criteria for comparison of self-organisation between the different applications are provided.

keywords   multi-agent system, self-organisation, applications, software

origin event

 Special Issue “Hot Topics in European Agent Research II”

 AL3-TF2

journal or series

 Informatica (Informatica)

container publication

 Special Issue “Hot Topics in European Agent Research II” (special issue, 2006) — Andrea Omicini, Paolo Petta, Matjaz Gams

companion publication

 The Second AgentLink III Technical Forum: Main Issues and Hot Topics in European Agent Research – Part 2 (editorial/introduction/preface, 2006) — Andrea Omicini, Paolo Petta, Matjaz Gams

 Issues in Multiagent Resource Allocation (article in journal, 2006) — Yann Chevaleyre, Paul E. Dunne, Ulle Endriss, Jérôme Lang, Michel Lemaître, Nicolas Maudet, Julian A. Padget, Steve Phelps, Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, Paulo Sousa

 A Survey of Programming Languages and Platforms for Multi-Agent Systems (article in journal, 2006) — Rafael H. Bordini, Lars Braubach, Mehdi Dastani, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, Jorge J. Gómez-Sanz, João Leite, Gregory O’Hare, Alexander Pokahr, Alessandro Ricci

 Self-Organisation and Emergence in MAS: An Overview (article in journal, 2006) — Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Marie-Pierre Gleizes, Anthony Karageorgos

 Bio-inspired Mechanisms for Artificial Self-organised Systems (article in journal, 2006) — Jean-Pierre Mano, Christine Bourjot, Gabriel Lopardo, Pierre Glize

 On Self-Organising Mechanisms from Social, Business and Economic Domains (article in journal, 2006) — Salima Hassas, Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Anthony Karageorgos, Cristiano Castelfranchi

funding project

 AgentLink III — A Coordination Network for Agent-based Computing (01/01/2004–31/01/2006)

companion publication for

 A Survey of Programming Languages and Platforms for Multi-Agent Systems (article in journal, 2006) — Rafael H. Bordini, Lars Braubach, Mehdi Dastani, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, Jorge J. Gómez-Sanz, João Leite, Gregory O’Hare, Alexander Pokahr, Alessandro Ricci

 Bio-inspired Mechanisms for Artificial Self-organised Systems (article in journal, 2006) — Jean-Pierre Mano, Christine Bourjot, Gabriel Lopardo, Pierre Glize

 Issues in Multiagent Resource Allocation (article in journal, 2006) — Yann Chevaleyre, Paul E. Dunne, Ulle Endriss, Jérôme Lang, Michel Lemaître, Nicolas Maudet, Julian A. Padget, Steve Phelps, Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, Paulo Sousa

 On Self-Organising Mechanisms from Social, Business and Economic Domains (article in journal, 2006) — Salima Hassas, Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Anthony Karageorgos, Cristiano Castelfranchi

 The Second AgentLink III Technical Forum: Main Issues and Hot Topics in European Agent Research – Part 2 (editorial/introduction/preface, 2006) — Andrea Omicini, Paolo Petta, Matjaz Gams

 Self-Organisation and Emergence in MAS: An Overview (article in journal, 2006) — Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Marie-Pierre Gleizes, Anthony Karageorgos