Socionic Multi-Agent Systems Based on Reflexive Petri Nets and Theories of Social Self-Organisation

This contribution summarises the core results of the transdisciplinary ASKO project, part of the German DFG's programme Sozionik, which combines sociologists' and computer scientists' skills in order to create improved theories and models of artificial societies. Our research group has (a) formulated a social theory, which is able to explain fundamental mechanisms of self-organisation in both natural and artificial societies, (b) modelled this in a mathematical way using a visual formalism, and (c) developed a novel multi-agent system architecture which is conceptually coherent, recursively structured (hence non-eclectic) and based on our social theory. The article presents an outline of both a sociological middle-range theory of social self-organisation in educational institutions, its formal, Petri net based model, including a simulation of one of its main mechanisms, and the multi-agent system architecture SONAR. It describes how the theory was created by a re-analysis of some grand social theories, by grounding it empirically, and finally how the theory was evaluated by modelling its concepts and statements.Multi-Agents Systems, Petri Nets, Self-Organisation, Social Theories

Workshop on Modelling of Objects, Components, and Agents, Aarhus, Denmark, August 27-28, 2001

This booklet contains the proceedings of the workshop Modelling of Objects, Components, and Agents (MOCA'01), August 27-28, 2001. The workshop is organised by the CPN group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark and the "Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science" Group at the University of Hamburg, Germany. The papers are also available in electronic form via the web pages: http://www.daimi.au.dk/CPnets/workshop01

A Framework for an adaptive grid scheduling: an organizational perspective

Grid systems are complex computational organizations made of several interacting components evolving in an unpredictable and dynamic environment. In such context, scheduling is a key component and should be adaptive to face the numerous disturbances of the grid while guaranteeing its robustness and efficiency. In this context, much work remains at low-level focusing on the scheduling component taken individually. However, thinking the scheduling adaptiveness at a macro level with an organizational view, through its interactions with the other components, is also important. Following this view, in this paper we model a grid system as an agent-based organization and scheduling as a cooperative activity. Indeed, agent technology provides high level organizational concepts (groups, roles, commitments, interaction protocols) to structure, coordinate and ease the adaptation of distributed systems efficiently. More precisely, we make the following contributions. We provide a grid conceptual model that identifies the concepts and entities involved in the cooperative scheduling activity. This model is then used to define a typology of adaptation including perturbing events and actions to undertake in order to adapt. Then, we provide an organizational model, based on the Agent Group Role (AGR) meta-model of Freber, to support an adaptive scheduling at the organizational level. Finally, a simulator and an experimental evaluation have been realized to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach

Nature as a Network of Morphological Infocomputational Processes for Cognitive Agents

This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted

Socionics: Sociological Concepts for Social Systems of Artificial (and Human) Agents

Socionics is an interdisciplinary approach with the objective to use sociological knowledge about the structures, mechanisms and processes of social interaction and social communication as a source of inspiration for the development of multi-agent systems, both for the purposes of engineering applications and of social theory construction and social simulation. The approach has been spelled out from 1998 on within the Socionics priority program funded by the German National research foundation. This special issue of the JASSS presents research results from five interdisciplinary projects of the Socionics program. The introduction gives an overview over the basic ideas of the Socionics approach and summarizes the work of these projects.Socionics, Sociology, Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Social Systems, Hybrid Systems, Social Simulation

A Conceptual Framework for Adapation

This paper presents a white-box conceptual framework for adaptation that promotes a neat separation of the adaptation logic from the application logic through a clear identification of control data and their role in the adaptation logic. The framework provides an original perspective from which we survey archetypal approaches to (self-)adaptation ranging from programming languages and paradigms, to computational models, to engineering solutions

A Conceptual Framework for Adapation

We present a white-box conceptual framework for adaptation. We called it CODA, for COntrol Data Adaptation, since it is based on the notion of control data. CODA promotes a neat separation between application and adaptation logic through a clear identification of the set of data that is relevant for the latter. The framework provides an original perspective from which we survey a representative set of approaches to adaptation ranging from programming languages and paradigms, to computational models and architectural solutions

A Conceptual Framework for Adapation

This paper presents a white-box conceptual framework for adaptation that promotes a neat separation of the adaptation logic from the application logic through a clear identification of control data and their role in the adaptation logic. The framework provides an original perspective from which we survey archetypal approaches to (self-)adaptation ranging from programming languages and paradigms, to computational models, to engineering solutions