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Towards next generation coordination infrastructures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2015

Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar ,
Carles Sierra ,
Josep Ll. Arcos ,
Maite Lopez-Sanchez  and
Inmaculada Rodriguez
Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Carles Sierra
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Josep Ll. Arcos
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Maite Lopez-Sanchez
Affiliation:
MAiA Department, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Gran Via de les Corts, Catalanes 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: maitedopez@ub.edu, inrna@ub.edu
Inmaculada Rodriguez
Affiliation:
MAiA Department, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Gran Via de les Corts, Catalanes 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: maitedopez@ub.edu, inrna@ub.edu
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Abstract

Coordination infrastructures play a central role in the engineering of multiagent systems. Since the advent of agent technology, research on coordination infrastructures has produced a significant number of infrastructures with varying features. In this paper, we review the the state-of-the-art coordination infrastructures with the purpose of identifying open research challenges that next generation coordination infrastructures should address. Our analysis concludes that next generation coordination infrastructures must address a number of challenges: (i) to become socially aware, by facilitating human interaction within a MAS; (ii) to assist agents in their decision making by providing decision support that helps them reduce the scope of reasoning and facilitates the achievement of their goals; and (iii) to increase openness to support on-line, fully decentralised design and execution. Furthermore, we identify some promising approaches in the literature, together with the research issues worth investigating, to cope with such challenges.

Type
Articles
Information
The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 30 , Special Issue 4: Challenges in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering , September 2015 , pp. 435 - 453
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2015 

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