Title: Aggregate plans for multiagent systems

Authors: Mirko Viroli; Danilo Pianini; Alessandro Ricci; Angelo Croatti

Addresses: Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy ' Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy ' Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy ' Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy

Abstract: We introduce the notion of 'aggregate plan', as a specification of the collective behaviour of a team of agents embedded in space. Aggregate plans are managed by self-organisation: they can be spread from a source agent, get iteratively diffused to the whole MAS, and be dynamically selected and carried on by each agent based on its local deliberation process. This approach is rooted on the aggregate computing paradigm, recently introduced to address open, dynamic, and large-scale scenarios of pervasive computing and IoT. We define the approach, describe the underlying computational mechanisms, discuss its expressiveness, and present an example of people rescuing in disaster scenarios.

Keywords: aggregate computing; multiagent planning; distributed spatial systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOSE.2017.087638

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2017 Vol.5 No.4, pp.336 - 365

Received: 09 Mar 2016
Accepted: 03 Feb 2017
Published online: 30 Oct 2017 *

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