System Architectures

This chapter focuses on how agents are configured relative to one another. Control relates to the degree of autonomy which an agent possesses. An agent whose goals and/or plans and/or actions are prescribed by the imperatives of another agent or agents has little autonomy. Collaboration focuses on the positive responses of an agent to proposals received or to situations in which it perceives it could assist. In the literature of concurrent design and manufacturing systems, some researchers have considered their blackboard systems to be multi-agent systems, and others have implemented their agent-based systems using blackboard architectures. Collaboration takes place through communication and involves coordinating plans and actions among agents. Designing an agent community for a particular real-world industrial application often requires a very early commitment to many of the most important parameters, particularly in the choice of infrastructure technologies. The matchmaking mechanism is very useful for information retrieval within the Internet.