Multiagent Systems Engineering: A Methodology and Language for Designing Agent Systems

: Much of the current research related to intelligent agents has focused on the capabilities and structure of individual agents. However, in order to solve complex problems, these agents must work cooperatively with other agents in a heterogeneous environment. This is the domain of Multiagent Systems. In multiagent systems, we are interested in the coordinated behavior of a system of individual agents to provide a system- level behavior. Sycara [13] lists six challenges of multiagent systems: 1. How to decompose problems and allocate tasks to individual agents. 2. How to coordinate agent control and communications. 3. How to make multiple agents act in a coherent manner. 4. How to make individual agents reason about other agents and the state of coordination. 5. How to reconcile conflicting goals between coordinating agents. 6. How to engineer practical multiagent systems.