A Metamodel for Agents, Roles, and Groups

Societies need patterned behavior to exist. Large-scale agent societies may contain a diversity of agents, each with differing abilities and functionalities. When such an agent system is given a task, it must dynamically muster together a group of agents that collectively have the capability to accomplish the task. To do this, the agent society needs to be able to understand its agents and their potential interactions. This paper contains a proposed superstructure specification that defines the user-level constructs required to model agents, their roles and their groups. These modeling constructs provide the basic foundational elements required in multi-agent systems to foster dynamic group formation and operation. As agent systems scale beyond the point where an individual organization can track and control their behavior, the use of these concepts within the society will facilitate dynamic, controlled, task-oriented group formation. This in turn will enhance the predictability, reliability and stability of the agent system as a whole, as well as facilitating the analysis of both group and system behavior.