TUNING BEHAVIOURS USING ATTRIBUTES EMBEDDED IN AN AGENTS ’ ARCHITECTURE

In this paper we discuss how to tune agents ’ behaviours by explicitly modify a set of elements previously defined and included in the agents ’ architecture. By tuning, we mean influencing agents ’ world view, changing their preferences and even modify their beliefs about which goals are possible. This elements which we call attributes, such as urgency, insistence and intensity, are able to modify agents ’ priorities with regard to the resource consumption, to modify the evaluation of the implicit costs of action execution and even to change agents ’ view about their capabilities to execute an action. In a preliminary experimental evaluation made in a multi-agent system environment, a modified predator-prey workbench, we show how the attributes are important elements while trying to improve predators ’ global efficiency. In the final discussion, we argue about the benefits of having this set of attributes which allow agents to be selected and modified by stakeholders to support environmental odds, like a team manager would do.