APOC — A Framework for Complex Agents

Computational Synthesis: From Basic Building Blocks to High Level Functionality

Volume

Papers from the 2003 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

In this paper we use the APOC -- an agent architecture framework intended for the analysis and implementation of complex agent architectures -- to investigate mechanisms of runtime architecture modification and resource management that allow for the specification of simple architectures which can develop into complex architectures at run time. After a brief overview of APOC, we show how a particular way of connecting components in APOC can be used to model various kinds of growing structures and, furthermore, how these structures can form modules to achieve higher level functionality. We also define a preliminary notion of "level of abstraction" for an APOC architecture and present a simple algorithm that can automatically assess the level of abstraction of APOC components in the architecture.