Luca Tummolini, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Alessandro Ricci, Mirko Viroli, Andrea Omicini

Coordination between multiple autonomous agents is a major issue for open multi-agent systems. This paper proposes the notion of Behavioural Implicit Communication (BIC) originally devised in human and animal societies as a new and critical coordination mechanism also for artificial agents. BIC is a parasitical form of communication that exploits both some environmental properties and the agents' capacity to interpret their actions. In this paper we abstract from the agents' architecture to focus on the interaction mediated by the environment. Observability of the environment — and in particular of agents' actions — is crucial for implementing BIC-based form of coordination in artificial societies. Accordingly in this paper we introduce an abstract model of environment providing services to enhance observation power of agents, enabling BIC and other form of observation-based coordination. Also, we describe a typology of environments and examples of observation based coordination with and without implicit communication.

Environments for Multi-Agent Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 3374, pages 215-231, February 2005.
Danny Weyns, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Fabien Michel (eds.), Springer Berlin Heidelberg
1st International Workshop (E4MAS 2004), New York, NY, USA, 19 July 2004. Revised Selected Papers

@incollection{bic-e4masI,
	Author = {Tummolini, Luca and Castelfranchi, Cristiano and Ricci, Alessandro and Viroli, Mirko and Omicini, Andrea},
	Booktitle = {Environments for Multi-Agent Systems},
	Doi = {10.1007/978-3-540-32259-7_11},
	Editor = {Weyns, Danny and Parunak, H. Van Dyke and Michel, Fabien},
	Isbn = {978-3-540-24575-9},
	Isbn-10 = {3-540-24575-8},
	Issn = {0302-9743},
	Issn-Online = {1611-3349},
	Month = feb,
	Note = {1st International Workshop (E4MAS 2004), New York, NY, USA, 19~July~2004. Revised Selected Papers},
	Pages = {215--231},
	Publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
	ScopusId = {2-s2.0-24144485892},
	Series = {LNAI},
	Title = {``{E}xhibitionists'' and ``Voyeurs'' do it better: A Shared Environment Approach for Flexible Coordination with Tacit Messages},
	Url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-540-32259-7_11},
	Volume = 3374,
	WosId = {000228360200011},
	Year = 2005}