TRUCE: Agent Coordination Through Concurrent Interpretation of Role-Based Protocols

Established protocols for coordination are essential for implementing joint-action activities among collaborating software agent. Most existing agents, however, are designed only to support static protocols, which limit their interaction domain to specific sets of agents. We develop an agent collaboration framework for open systems that enables an agent to expand its acquaintance set and to adapt to various coordination protocols dynamically. This is achieved through writing coordination scripts that are interpreted at collaboration time. We developed a role-based coordination language for writing these scripts, where the coordination mechanism used is the concurrent interpretation of a single script by the participants of a given collaboration. This interpretation defines the behavior of every agent. Thus. their individual interpretation may differ depending on the roles that were assigned to them. This new coordination language provides various coordination primitives in which the basic synchronization is achieved via distributed rendezvous points. In this paper, we present and demonstrate the elements of the TRUCE language

Twenty years of coordination technologies: State-of-the-art and perspectives

Since complexity of inter- and intra-systems interactions is steadily increasing in modern application scenarios (e.g., the IoT), coordination technologies are required to take a crucial step towards maturity. In this paper we look back at the history of the COORDINATION conference in order to shed light on the current status of the coordination technologies there proposed throughout the years, in an attempt to understand success stories, limitations, and possibly reveal the gap between actual technologies, theoretical models, and novel application needs

Dynamic agent collaboration for open systems using concurrent intepretation of role-based coordination protocols(1)

In a system of collaborating software agents, established protocols for coordination are essential for accomplishing the intended functionalities of their joint-activities . Most existing agents, however, are designed to support predetermined static protocols, limiting their interaction domain to specific sets of agents. This approach hinders computational reusability, agent productivity, and greater opportunities for cooperative problem solving. It also undermines the usability and worthiness of an agent, especially in the context of open systems where the use of agents is critical. This dissertation introduces an agent collaboration framework for open systems that expands an agent\u27s vicinity for interaction and enables it to adapt dynamically to various coordination protocols. These protocols are determined only during the actual collaboration engagements. Our approach is based on the notion of coordination agencies . An agency is an abstract mechanism for managing and servicing coordination protocols for a subscribing collaboration group, where coordination concerns are delegated to a set of coordinator proxies . We developed a general coordination approach using concurrent interpretation of role-based coordination protocols . Aside from dynamic collaboration, an agent is empowered to engage in multiple collaboration groups simultaneously. The framework adopts an economics-based cooperation model for organizing and facilitating the delivery of services. (1) This research is supported in part by IBM Corporation of Endicott, NY and the Department of Science and Technology of the Republic of the Philippines through the ESEP project