Improvised coordination in agent organisations

Abstract

This thesis investigates coordination between intelligent software agents operating within agent organisations. Motivated by the prospect of agents working with humans in real world complex domains, the thesis focuses on flexible behaviour and improvisation in agent organisations. Methods used to design organisations of software agents are explored with particular consideration given to problem situations that cannot be defined with a detailed pre-scripted solution for coordinated action. A conceptual model that describes the components that are needed in an agent based model in a multi-agent system is referred to in this thesis as a meta-model. A number of agent organisation-based meta-mod..