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Two Concepts of Module, for Agent Societies and Inter-societal Agent Systems

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Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10738))

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Abstract

This paper introduces two concepts of module, for agent societies and inter-societal agent systems. The first concept defines modules on the basis of agent organizations, the second, on the basis of whole agent societies. The former serves the modularization of agent societies. The latter, the modularization of inter-societal agent systems. Both are shown to serve as agent-based modules for conventional software systems. The two concepts are first defined formally and, then, illustrated generically with the help of an informally proposed module language for agent societies. Finally, a case study sketches a concrete example of the use of agent organizations for the modular construction of agent societies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Alternatively, we may graphically represent the different hierarchical levels by the recursive nesting of sub-modules, as in the example in Fig. 4.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., [5] for an example of the first way, and [6] for an example of the second way, the latter specifically regarding the modularization of Java-based systems.

  3. 3.

    For compatibility with previous papers, we keep the time-indexed form of the definitions that follow, even though that would not be strictly necessary in this paper.

  4. 4.

    Up to a minimum size of the society’s population and a minimally functioning organizational structure, which are to be determined on a case by case basis.

  5. 5.

    The observable events of an artifact, in the JaCaMo platform [14], appear as immediate perceptions for the agents that performed the special operation focus on that artifact.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks the reviewers for their very useful comments. This work had partial financial support from CNPq (Proc. 310423/2014-7).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PPGComp/FURG, Rio Grande, RS, Brazil

    Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa

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  1. Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa
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Correspondence to Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. LIP6, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France

    Amal El Fallah-Seghrouchni

  2. DISI, University of Bologna, Cesena, Forli, Italy

    Alessandro Ricci

  3. Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA

    Tran Cao Son

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da Rocha Costa, A.C. (2018). Two Concepts of Module, for Agent Societies and Inter-societal Agent Systems. In: El Fallah-Seghrouchni, A., Ricci, A., Son, T. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10738. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91899-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91899-0_4

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