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International Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-agent Systems

SELMAS 2006: Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems V pp 1–20Cite as

On Fault Tolerance in Law-Governed Multi-agent Systems

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNPSE,volume 4408)

Abstract

The dependability of open multi-agent systems is a particular concern, notably because of their main characteristics as decentralization and no single point of control. This paper describes an approach to increase the availability of such systems through a technique of fault tolerance known as agent replication, and to increase their reliability through a mechanism of agent interaction regulation called law enforcement mechanism. Therefore, we combine two frameworks: one for law enforcement, named XMLaw, and another for agent adaptive replication, named DimaX, in which the decision of replicating an agent is based on a dynamic estimation of its criticality. Moreover, we will describe how we can reuse some of the information expressed by laws in order to help at the estimation of agent criticality, thus providing a better integration of the two frameworks. At the end of the paper, we recommend a means to specify criticality monitoring variation through a structured argumentation approach that documents the rationale around the decisions of the law elements derivation.

Keywords

  • Multi-Agent Systems
  • Open Systems
  • Law-Governed Approach
  • Dependability of Open Systems
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Requirements
  • Criticality
  • Availability
  • Reliability

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-73131-3_1
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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Engineering Laboratory, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Maíra A. de C. Gatti, Gustavo R. de Carvalho, Rodrigo B. de Paes & Carlos J. P. de Lucena

  2. Laboratoire d’informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6), Universit´e Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

    Jean-Pierre Briot

Authors
  1. Maíra A. de C. Gatti
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  2. Gustavo R. de Carvalho
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  3. Rodrigo B. de Paes
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  4. Carlos J. P. de Lucena
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  5. Jean-Pierre Briot
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    de C. Gatti, M.A., de Carvalho, G.R., de Paes, R.B., de Lucena, C.J.P., Briot, JP. (2007). On Fault Tolerance in Law-Governed Multi-agent Systems. In: Choren, R., Garcia, A., Giese, H., Leung, Hf., Lucena, C., Romanovsky, A. (eds) Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems V. SELMAS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4408. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73131-3_1

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73131-3_1

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