MIX: A General Purpose Multiagent Architecture

The MIX multiagent architecture has been conceived as a general purpose distributed framework for the cooperation of multiple heterogeneous agents. This architecture, starting from previous work in our group on multiagent systems, has been redesigned and implemented within a research project investigating a particular class of hybrid systems: those integrated by connectionist and symbolic components. This paper describes in some detail the principal concepts of the architecture: the network model and the agent model. Around these models, a set of languages and tools have been developed. In particular, an Agent Description Language (MIX-ADL) has been designed to specify agents declaratively in a hierarchy of classes. 1 A multiagent architecture for hybridization Distributed heterogeneous systems are receiving great attention from researchers in all the computer-related fields. These systems involve components with relevant differences regarding their nature (human/artificial), role inside an organisation, capabilities, structure, etc. In this work, we have developed a general framework for the interoperation of software systems [10]. This architecture, starting from a previous work in our group on multiagent systems [6], has been developed within a research project investigating a particular class of hybrid systems: those integrated by connectionist and symbolic components. The obvious complementarity of the symbolic and connectionist approaches to problem solving has led to a growing interest in these hybrid systems involving the cooperation of both approaches [15]. This is the focus of the MIX project. An overview of the project can be found in [13], and a complete description of the MIX platform in ? This research is funded in part by the Commission of the European Communities under the ESPRIT Basic Research Project MIX: Modular Integration of Connectionist and Symbolic Processing in Knowledge Based Systems, ESPRIT-9119. The MIX consortium is formed by the following institutions and companies: Institute National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA–Lorraine/CRIN–CNRS, France), Centre Universitaire d’Informatique (Université de Genève, Switzerland), Institute d’Informatique et de Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble (France), Kratzer Automatisierung (Germany), Fakultät für Informatik (Technische Universität München, Germany) and Dep. Ingenierı́a de Sistemas Telemáticos (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain).