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Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency IX pp 62–82Cite as

Modeling Organizational Structures and Agent Knowledge for Mulan Applications

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (TOPNOC,volume 8910)

Abstract

In software engineering the initial setup of a system, as well as the self-adaptation processes within a system are challenging tasks. We address these challenges by providing explications of organizational structures through modeling. In this paper we present a service-oriented perspective on the organizational structure of MAS and we present modeling techniques and tools for supporting this perspective. We pursue a model-driven approach and a tight integration between various models on the one hand and between the models and the generated code on the other hand. In particular, we use ontologies to define a meta-model for organizational structures in a way that we can easily generate the initial content of agent knowledge bases in the form of FIPA semantic language (SL) fragments, depending on the positions the agents occupy in the context of the organizational structure. This allows the agents to reason and to communicate about their organizational embedding, which is a prerequisite for self-adaptation in multi-agent systems.

Keywords

  • Renew
  • Mulan
  • P*aose
  • Petri nets
  • Multi-agent systems
  • Model-driven development
  • Organizational structures

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, we have developed the Sonar model [17, 18] for multi-agent teamwork support, where we use a more elaborated model of functional service dependencies between agents based on task delegation structures and a behavior-based notion of service refinement.

  2. 2.

    Renew (http://www.renew.de) also provides the virtual machine that executes Mulan applications.

  3. 3.

    An example of a Concept Diagram will be discussed in the context of defining a knowledge base format in Sect. 3.4.

  4. 4.

    Refer to [7] for a discussion of our view on hard and soft dependencies.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the TGI group of the Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg and especially Dr. Daniel Moldt for the support, constructive criticism and fruitful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Lawrence Cabac, David Mosteller & Matthias Wester-Ebbinghaus

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  1. Lawrence Cabac
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Correspondence to Lawrence Cabac .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Maciej Koutny

  2. École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Cachan, France

    Serge Haddad

  3. Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Alex Yakovlev

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Cabac, L., Mosteller, D., Wester-Ebbinghaus, M. (2014). Modeling Organizational Structures and Agent Knowledge for Mulan Applications. In: Koutny, M., Haddad, S., Yakovlev, A. (eds) Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency IX. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8910. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45730-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45730-6_4

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