Systemic Modeling of Agent Coaction: A Catalog of Decentralized Coordinating Processes

Taking inspiration from natural self-organizing systems is a successful strategy to solve computational problems in distributed systems. Faced with a particular problem, application designers have to identify an appropriate dynamical behavior and decide how to induce similar behavioral modes. In order to consolidate these ad-hoc activities to a systematic dynamical design method, we discuss and exemplify a behavioral modeling approach that describes the macroscopic behavior of agent-based software systems. This formalism is used to catalog the dynamic behavior of prominent examples of natural self-organizing systems. These here presented models represent generic, reusable templates for decentralized system adaptations that serve as analysis templates for application designs. A tailored programming model allows to supplement these templates in agent-based software applications with minimal intervention in the agent models

Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

A Reputation-Based Approach to Self-Adaptive Service Selection

Service-orientation provides concepts and tools for flexible composition and management of largescale distributed software applications. The automated run-time management of such loosely coupled software systems, however, poses still major challenges and is therefore an active research area, including the use of novel computing paradigms. In this context, the dynamic and adaptive selection of best possible service providers is an important task, which can be addressed by an appropriate middleware layer that allows considering different service quality aspects when managing the adaptive execution of distributed service workflows dynamically. In such an approach, service consumers are enabled to delegate the adaptive selection of service providers at run-time to the execution infrastructure. The selection criteria used are based on the cost of a service provision and the continuous, dynamic evaluation of reputations of providers, i.e. maintained track records of meeting the respective service commitments. This paper discusses the design and operating principle of such an automatic service selection middleware extension. Its ability to balance different quality criteria for service selection, such as service cost vs. the reliability of provision, is empirically evaluated based on a multi-agent platform approach

Systematically Engineering Self-Organizing Systems: The SodekoVS Approach

Self-organizing systems promise new software quality attributes that are very hard to obtain using standard software engineering approaches. In accordance with the visions of e.g. autonomic computing and organic computing, self-organizing systems promote self-adaptability as one major property helping to realize software that can manage itself at runtime. In this respect, self-adaptability can be seen as a necessary foundation for realizing e.g. self* properties such as self-configuration or self-protection. However, the systematic development of systems exhibiting such properties challenges current development practices. The SodekoVS project addresses the challenge to purposefully engineer adaptivity by proposing a new approach that considers the system architecture as well as the software development methodology as integral intertwined aspects for system construction. Following the proposed process, self-organizing dynamics, inspired by biological, physical and social systems, can be integrated into applications by composing modules that distribute feedback control structures among system entities. These compositions support hierarchical as well as completely decentralized solutions without a single point of failure. This novel development conception is supported by a reference architecture, a tailored programming model as well as a library of ready to use self-organizing patterns. The key challenges, recent research activities, application scenarios as well as intermediate results are discussed

Controlled run-time adaptivity in industrial agent systems : challenges and research prospects

Developing Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) inherently requires enabling run-time adaptivity. These systems integrate physical components, which operate in changeable contexts. In addition, objectives may change, due to socio-technical aspects. Industrial agents have been proposed for enhancing future industrial automation and control systems and integrating agents in industrial systems is an active field of research. Besides enabling technical compatibility of agent concepts and frameworks, the design and orchestration of agent activities have to be fine-tuned and a goal-directed [email protected] requires that the system can analyze its own structure at run-time; therefore, the system’s structure has to be reflected inside the system. Here, we outline current work and research challenges on how explicit organizational modeling can facilitate developing industrial agent systems. We discuss architectural aspects and outline how adaptations of organizations can be enabled, modeled and automated following the MAPE-K approach.PeerReviewe

On simulations in MAS development deriving stochastic models from agent implementations to examine self–organizing dynamics

PeerReviewe

Separating agent-functioning and inter-agent coordination by activated modules : the DECOMAS architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

Defining adaption measures for organisational multi-agent systems

Designing adaptive multi-agent Systems (MAS) is a challenging development effort. A key point of adaptive systems is that they provide alternative options for acting and designers have to weight the number and elaboration of these alternatives. Here, we concentrate on organisation-oriented MAS and show that organisational models provide suitable means for identifying key measures of this adaptivity. We derive measures both from the static description of the organisation as well as from the induced adaptation dynamics grounded on a Markovian analysis of the behaviour. These measures allow for a goal-directed planning of adaption.PeerReviewe