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Taking the perspective of Ecosystems and human societies, where living and non-living entities are meant to interact in the same complex environment, we introduce the notion of artifacts in MAS. In particular, we investigate the use of a special kind of artifacts, cognitive artifacts, as computational entities designed to be read and exploited by cognitive agents in order to achieve their goals.
By adopting a functional approach, cognitive artifacts are supposed to play pivotal roles for agents capable to reason about them. On the one side, artifact rapresentational function allows agent to improve epistemic states, i.e., by representing and sharing strategic knowledge in the overall system.
On the other side, artifacts operational function allows agents to improve the repertoire of actions, i.e., by providing additional means which can be purposively triggered by agents in order to achieve their goals.
Some of the practical benefits of the approach are discussed along with a test-bed scenario built with CARTAGO where Jason and Jadex agents are engaged in goal oriented activities relying on the transmission of relevant knowledge and mediated kinds interactions wich are enabled by cognitive artifacts.