Designing Self-Organising Environments with Agents and Artefacts: A Simulation-Driven Approach


Luca Gardelli, Mirko Viroli, Matteo Casadei, Andrea Omicini

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 2(2), pages 171–195
2008

We propose a methodological approach for tackling the early design stages of self-organising Multiagent Systems (MASs). We adopt an architectural pattern based on the Agents and Artefacts (A&A) metamodel: self-organisation mechanisms are added to an existing environment of artefacts by embedding them into environmental agents. We rely on a three-stage design approach with modelling, simulation and tuning, so as to identify a suitable design of environmental agents and their interaction with artefacts. The main objective is to design a MAS environment providing services that self-organise in response to the unpredictable dynamics of the agents exploiting them.

As a case study, we analyse the problem called collective sorting, a service for decentralised sorting of items in MAS environments that was inspired by social insects' behaviour: the proposed solution features environmental agents and tuple spaces, whose design choices and evaluation have been driven by formal simulations.

(keywords) collective sorting; self-organisation; emergence; methodology; simulation; tuning; pattern; enrivonment; Multiagent System; MAS; artefact

Journals & Series

Publication

— authors

— editors

Massimo Cossentino, Giancarlo Fortino, Wilma Russo

— status

published

— sort

article in journal

— publication date

2008

— journal

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

— volume

2

— issue

2

— pages

171–195

URLs

original page  |  original PDF

identifiers

— DOI

10.1504/IJAOSE.2008.017314

— ACM

10.1504/IJAOSE.2008.017314

— IRIS

11585/62551

— Scopus

2-s2.0-77954568138

— print ISSN

1746-1375

— online ISSN

1746-1383

notes

— note

Special Issue on Multi-Agent Systems and Simulation

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