Tracing Dependencies of Strategy Selections in Agent Design

Book One

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 17

Student Abstracts

Given the diverse multi-agent system (MAS) implementations developed for various domains, there has been a lack of a comprehensive method for analyzing and evaluating the assortment of multi-agent architectures and technology resident in those architectures. This research proposes that the first step in providing a formal analysis method is to decompose an agent into its core competencies (CC), which define the major functionalities of an agent. For each CC, the designer chooses to implement a core competency strategy from a library of existing strategies. Inherent dependencies exist between CCs and the selected strategies must serve to satisfy those dependencies. The designer must recognize that selection of one strategy can constrain or eliminate the consideration of strategies for other needed CCs. With a fundamental understanding of how and why certain combinations of strategies produce specific agent-level and system-level behaviors, a method to analyze agents at an abstract level can be developed for MAS designers to investigate the system-level implications of selecting strategies that have dependencies spanning across multiple CCs and across agents resident in the system.