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Self-organising Software pp 251–279Cite as

Holonic Multi-Agent Systems

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Part of the book series: Natural Computing Series ((NCS))

Abstract

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) stand out as a particularly suitable paradigm for designing complex systems. Its elementary constituents are termed “agents”, that is software entities which exhibit autonomous and flexible behaviours. However, most widely used models still consider agents as atomic entities. This may be a problem for MAS dedicated to the study and simulation of complex systems that frequently exhibit hierarchical structures. Indeed, almost all proposals for agent architectures have not addressed the general problem of treating collections of “agents” as higher-order entities, for example by treating organisations as agents. This chapter focuses on the definition of Holonic Multi-Agent Systems (HMAS) which are a special type of MAS based on the concept of “holon”. Holons are self-similar entities that represent whole-part constructs and can be viewed either as higher-level system components or as wholes composed of other holons as substructures. Furthermore, a framework for engineering HMAS based on organisational concepts is introduced.

This chapter presents holonic concepts and how they can be used to model MAS with multiple granularity levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Knowledge Query Manipulation Language and Agent Communication Language are two agent communication languages based on the speech acts theory.

  2. 2.

    Janus was a Roman god having two faces.

  3. 3.

    The representation of holon composition has been inspired by [6].

  4. 4.

    Roles represent behavioural abstractions of explicit behaviours within a certain context.

  5. 5.

    Borrowed from Robert A. Dahl, who coined it to describe a specific democratic government type.

  6. 6.

    Originates from the Greek terms Apan, meaning “all” or “every”, and archein, meaning “to rule”.

  7. 7.

    Allowing resources to be covered by more than one antennas can be a first extension of this exemplar model.

  8. 8.

    The criteria for accepting or rejecting admission requests submitted by Resource holons will be discussed in the next section.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CITAT, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional—Facultad Regional Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

    Sebastian Rodriguez

  2. UTBM, Belfort, France

    Vincent Hilaire, Nicolas Gaud, Stephane Galland & Abderrafiâa Koukam

Authors
  1. Sebastian Rodriguez
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  2. Vincent Hilaire
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  3. Nicolas Gaud
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  4. Stephane Galland
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  5. Abderrafiâa Koukam
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vincent Hilaire .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre Universitaire d'Informatique, Université de Genève, route de Drize 7, Carouge, 1227, Geneve, Switzerland

    Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo

  2. , Institut de Recherche, Université Paul Sabatier, route de Narbonne 118, Toulouse, 31062, France

    Marie-Pierre Gleizes

  3. of Larissa, Dept. of Forestry, Technological Education Institute, Terma Mavromihali, Karditsa, 431 00, Greece

    Anthony Karageorgos

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Rodriguez, S., Hilaire, V., Gaud, N., Galland, S., Koukam, A. (2011). Holonic Multi-Agent Systems. In: Di Marzo Serugendo, G., Gleizes, MP., Karageorgos, A. (eds) Self-organising Software. Natural Computing Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17348-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17348-6_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17347-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17348-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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