Multi-agent Collaboration in Distributed Self-Adaptive Systems

Multi-Agent Collaboration (MAC) is a means by which agents solve complex real-world problems. It encompasses agents´ coordination, negotiation and cooperation towards their shared goal. A distributed collaboration community consisting of heterogeneous agents in ever-changing environments faces varying degrees of collaborators´ goals and/or polices conflicts. Therefore, the focus of my research is on collaborators´ conflict management, particularly during community formation in distributed Self-Adaptive Systems. In this paper, the MAC literature is reviewed and a Multi-Agent Collaboration Community Formation (MAC-CF) taxonomy is proposed. The taxonomy adds the essential Establishment phase to the MAC process. The Establishment phase covers all the essential structural and behavioural aspects of a collaboration community formation in order to minimize agents´ conflicts in the early stage of collaboration. Additionally, an architecture selection guideline will be designed to facilitate the conflict management of collaborators´ goals and policies during the collaboration. The evaluation of this approach will be based on Smart-Grid (SG) scenario implementing a Multi-Agent Self-Adaptive System composed of heterogeneous agents with multiple goals and policies.