Flexible coordinator design for modeling resource sharing in multi-agent systems

One approach to modeling multi-agent systems (MASs) is to employ a method that defines components which describe the local behavior of individual agents, as well as a special component, called a coordinator. The coordinator component coordinates the resource sharing behavior among the agents. The agent models define: a set of local plans, and the combination of local plans and a coordinator defines a system's global plan. Although earlier work has provided the base functionality needed to synthesize inter-agent resource sharing behavior for a global, conflict-free MAS environment, the lack of coordination flexibility limits the modeling capability at both the local plan level and the global plan level. In this paper, we describe a flexible design method that supports a range of coordinator components. The method defines four levels of coordination and an associated four-step coordinator generation process, which allows for the design of coordinators with increasing capabilities for handling complexity associated with resource coordination. Colored Petri net based simulation is used to analyze various properties that derive from different coordinators and synthesis of a reduced coordinator component is discussed for cases that involve homogeneous agents. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.