Multi-agent Systems with Compasses

This paper investigates agreement protocols over cooperative and cooperative--antagonistic multi-agent networks with coupled continuous-time nonlinear dynamics. To guarantee convergence for such systems, it is common in the literature to assume that the vector field of each agent is pointing inside the convex hull formed by the states of the agent and its neighbors, given that the relative states between each agent and its neighbors are available. This convexity condition is relaxed in this paper, as we show that it is enough that the vector field belongs to a strict tangent cone based on a local supporting hyperrectangle. The new condition has the natural physical interpretation of requiring shared reference directions in addition to the available local relative states. Such shared reference directions can be further interpreted as if each agent holds a magnetic compass indicating the orientations of a global frame. It is proven that the cooperative multi-agent system achieves exponential state agreement if and only if the time-varying interaction graph is uniformly jointly quasi-strongly connected. Cooperative--antagonistic multi-agent systems are also considered. For these systems, the relation has a negative sign for arcs corresponding to antagonistic interactions. State agreement may not be achieved, but instead it is shown that all the agents' states asymptotically converge, and their limits agree componentwise in absolute values if and in general only if the time-varying interaction graph is uniformly jointly strongly connected.Comment: SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, In pres

mPower: A component-based development framework for multi-agent systems to support business processes

One of the obstacles preventing the widespread adoption of multi-agent systems in industry is the difficulty of implementing heterogeneous interactions among participating agents via asynchronous messages. This difficulty arises from the need to understand how to combine elements of various content languages, ontologies, and interaction protocols in order to construct meaningful and appropriate messages. In this paper mPower, a component-based layered framework for easing the development of multi-agent systems, is described, and the facility for customising the components for reuse in similar domains is explained. The framework builds on the JADE-LEAP platform, which provides a homogeneous layer over diverse operating systems and hardware devices, and allows ubiquitous deployment of applications built on multi-agent systems both in wired and wireless environments. The use of the framework to develop mPowermobile , a multi-agent system to support mobile workforces, is reported

A Multi-Agent Systems Contribution for Audit and Change Management

The progress made in Information Technology and the popularity of best practices have grown to give rise to new applications such as IT GRC. the good use of these applications requires communication and exchanges between these architectures. In front for a high number of standards and best practices, the model of management in Information system department becomes very dynamic. In this model, audit and change management are two problematics that are rarely automated in the function of information systems. These systems must adapt to new management methods and practices in order to improve innovation and management within companies. The major challenge of these standards and best practices is to adapt the target processes to the existing context and to have automatic mechanisms for auditing and generating a plan of evolution in an application. In this paper we propose an approach for Audit and Change Management in IT GRC tools. Our approach uses multi-agent systems to give the evolution plan in order to generate a road map for implementation the IT governance framework

Measuring the BDARX architecture by agent oriented system a case study

Distributed systems are progressively designed as multi-agent systems that are helpful in designing high strength complex industrial software. Recently, distributed systems cooperative applications are openly access, dynamic and large scales. Nowadays, it hardly seems necessary to emphasis on the potential of decentralized software solutions. This is because the main benefit lies in the distributed nature of information, resources and action. On the other hand, the progression in multi agent systems creates new challenges to the traditional methodologies of fault-tolerance that typically relies on centralized and offline solution. Research on multi-agent systems had gained attention for designing software that operates in distributed and open environments, such as the Internet. DARX (Dynamic Agent Replication eXtension) is one of the architecture which aimed at building reliable software that would prove to be both flexible and scalable and also aimed to provide adaptive fault tolerance by using dynamic replication methodologies. Therefore, the enhancement of DARX known as BDARX can provide dynamic solution of byzantine faults for the agent based systems that embedded DARX. The BDARX architecture improves the fault tolerance ability of multi-agent systems in long run and strengthens the software to be more robust against such arbitrary faults. The BDARX provide the solution for the Byzantine fault tolerance in DARX by making replicas on the both sides of communication agents by using BFT protocol for agent systems instead of making replicas only on server end and assuming client as failure free. This paper shows that the dynamic behaviour of agents avoid us from making discrimination between server and client replicas

Algebras for Agent Norm-Regulation

An abstract architecture for idealized multi-agent systems whose behaviour is regulated by normative systems is developed and discussed. Agent choices are determined partially by the preference ordering of possible states and partially by normative considerations: The agent chooses that act which leads to the best outcome of all permissible actions. If an action is non-permissible depends on if the result of performing that action leads to a state satisfying a condition which is forbidden, according to the norms regulating the multi-agent system. This idea is formalized by defining set-theoretic predicates characterizing multi-agent systems. The definition of the predicate uses decision theory, the Kanger-Lindahl theory of normative positions, and an algebraic representation of normative systems.Comment: 25 page