TuCSoN

Stigmergy has been adopted in MAS (multi-agent systems) and in other fields as a technique for realising forms of emergent coordination in societies composed by a large amount of ant-like, non-rational agents. In this paper we discuss a conceptual (and engineering) framework for exploring the use of stigmergy in the context of societies composed by cognitive/rational agents, as a means for supporting high-level, knowledge-based social activities. multi-agent We refer to this kind of stigmergy as cognitive ...

This paper describes CArtA gO, a framework for developing artifact-based working environments for multiagent systems (MAS). The framework is based on the notion of artifact, as a basic abstraction to model and engineer objects, resources and tools designed to be used and manipulated by agents at run-time to support their working activities, in particular the cooperative ones. CArtA gO enables MAS engineers to design and develop suitable artifacts, and to extend existing agent platforms with the possibility to create artifact-based working environments, programming agents to exploit them. In this paper, first the abstract model and architecture of CArtA gO is described, then a first Java-based prototype technology is discussed.

This paper presents a multi-agent framework based on argumentative agent technology for the automation of the workflow selection and execution. In this framework, workflow selection is coordinated by agent interactions governed by the rules of a dialogue game whose purpose is to evaluate the workflow's properties via argumentation. Once a workflow is selected using this process, the workflow is executed by dynamically configuring workflow engines to coordinate the participating agents' workflow activities.

When dealing with non-trivial social systems, Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS) makes it possible to model and simulate social aspects without neglecting articulated motivations, decisions and behaviours by individuals. In this paper, we experiment with the simulation of a peculiar sort of social system — namely, Medieval Battles — by using general-purpose agent methodologies and technologies — namely, SODA and TuCSoN — in order to better understand and emphasise the benefits of MABS in the simulation of social systems.

Stigmergy has been adopted in MAS (multi-agent systems) and in other fields as a technique for realising forms of emergent coordination in societies composed by a large amount of ant-like, non-rational agents. In this paper we discuss a conceptual (and engineering) framework for exploring the use of stigmergy in the context of societies composed by cognitive / rational agents, as a means for supporting high-level, knowledge-based social activities. We refer to this kind of stigmergy as cognitive stigmergy. Cognitive stigmergy is based on the use of artifacts as tools populating and structuring the agent working environment, and which agents perceive, share and rationally use for their individual goals. Artifacts are environment abstractions that mediate agent interaction and enable emergent coordination: as such, they can be used to encapsulate and enact the stigmergic mechanisms and the shared knowledge upon which emergent coordination processes are based.
In this paper, we start exploring this scenario introducing an agent-based framework for cognitive stigmergy based on artifacts. After discussing the main conceptual issues — the notion of cognitive stigmergy and the role of artifacts —, we sketch an abstract architecture for cognitive stigmergy, and outline its implementation upon the TuCSoN agent coordination infrastructure.