Distributed artificial intelligence for runtime feature-interaction resolution

The feature-interaction problem has many different instances. It is argued that some instances lend themselves to a distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) approach. The use of DAI techniques in current telecommunications systems appears quite natural in light of two trends in the way these systems are designed: the distribution of functionality and the incorporation of intelligence. The author illustrates the relevance of DAI techniques to the feature-interaction problem by discussing existing work (lodes, team-CPS, multistage negotiation, and negotiating agents) that address one or more instances of the problem. He further identifies the kind of cooperation and coordination that the feature-interaction problem requires and the interesting research problems it poses to distributed artificial intelligence.<>