Where Should Complexity Go? Cooperation in Complex Agents with Minimal Communication

The `Radical Agent Concept' in this chapter is that communication between agents in a MAS should be the simplest part of the system. When extensive real-time coordination between modules is required, then those modules should probably be considered elements of a single modular agent rather than as agents themselves. The advantage of this distinction is that system developers can then leverage standard software-engineering practices and more centralized coordination mechanisms to reduce the over-all complexity of the system. In this chapter I provide arguments for this point and also examples, both from nature and from my own research in building modular agents