Engineering Coordination

Abstract

The reuse of code and concepts is an important aspect when developing multiagent systems (MAS) and it is a driving force of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). In particular, the reuse of mechanisms like coordination is fundamental to support developers of MASs. In this article we address the selection of effective and efficient mechanisms to coordinate plans among autonomous agents. The selection of coordination mechanisms is, up to now, not covered sufficiently. Therefore, we present the ECo-CoPS approach that defines a structured process for the selection of coordination mechanisms for autonomous planning systems, where the local autonomy and existing planning systems can be preserved.