Towards a Hybrid MAS Organizational Model

Abstract

The organizational aspects are currently getting a great attention within the multi-agent systems (MAS) community. The motivation towards this trend is finding a way to handle the increasing complexity and distribution of modern agent-based applications using higher order abstractions such as agent organizations. It is a transition from concerning the micro level (individual agents) to concerning the macro level (the whole system) to handle complexity. A large number of MAS organizational models can be found in MAS literature. Some of them adopt the ACMAS (Agent-Centered MAS) viewpoint and others adopt the OCMAS (Organizational-Centered MAS) viewpoint. Each of the ACMAS and OCMAS viewpoints has its advantages and disadvantages; therefore, combining them into a hybrid model is expected to give us the chance to take benefit of their advantages and avoid their disadvantages. This chapter presents our recent work towards the conceptual design of a hybrid MAS organizational model that combines both of the ACMAS and OCMAS viewpoints.