Flexible coordinator design for modeling resource sharing in multi-agent systems

One approach to modeling multi-agent systems (MAS) is to employ a method that defines components which describe the local behavior of individual agents, as well as a special component, called a coordinator. The coordinator component coordinates the resource-sharing behavior among the agents. The agent models define a set of local plans, and the combination of local plans and a coordinator defines a system’s global plan. Although earlier work has provided the base functionality needed to synthesize inter-agent resource sharing behavior for a global, conflict-free MAS environment, the lack of coordination flexibility limits the modeling capability at both the local plan level and the global plan level. In this paper, we describe a flexible design method that supports a range of coordinator components. The method defines four levels of coordination and an associated four-step coordinator generation process, which allows for the design of coordinators with increasing capabilities for handling complexity associated with resource coordination. Colored Petri Net-based simulation is used to analyze various properties that derive from different coordinators and synthesis of a reduced coordinator component is discussed for cases that involve homogeneous agents.