Design Patterns for Self-Organising Systems

Natural systems are regarded as rich sources of inspiration for engineering artificial systems, particularly when adopting the multiagent system (MAS) paradigm. To promote a systematic reuse of mechanisms featured in self-organising systems, we analyse a selection of design patterns devised from the self-organisation literature. Starting from our reference MAS metamodel, we propose a pattern scheme that reflects the peculiarities of self-organising systems. Then, we provide a complete characterisation of each pattern, with particular attention to the problem description, the solution with respect to our metamodel, the natural systems which have inspired the pattern and known applications.