Analysis and Design of Multiagent Systems Using Hybrid Coordination Media

Over the last few years, two advances in agent-oriented software engineering have had a significant impact. The first is the identification of interaction and coordination as the central focus of multiagent systems design and the second is the realization that the multiagent organization is distinct from the individual agents that populate the system. Also, the evolution of new, more powerful hybrid coordination models, which combine data-centered and control-centered coordination approaches, have given us the capability to model and implement the rules that govern organizations independently from the individual agents in the system. This paper investigates how to combine the power of these hybrid coordination capabilities with the concept of organizational rules using traditional conversation-based approaches to designing multiagent systems.