Roles and Hierarchy in Multi-agent Organizations

Holonic Multi-Agent organisations are particular pyramidal organisations where agents of a layer (having the same coordinator) are able to communicate and to negotiate directly between them. Holonic agents are generally structured by services (for examples: to search information, to interact with the user). Some holonic agents, distributed in the system, can have same roles without being in a same layer. However, it is essential to interact with agents according to theirs roles: most of multi-agent methods and platforms are based on the roles management. In order to beneficiate of the two advantages which are the control allowed by the holonic architecture and the roles management, we propose a particular holonic architecture based on the workings mechanisms of human organisations. We have implemented this architecture by offering a role management capacity to a hierarchical multi-agent platform.