Decentralised Control of Complex Systems

Many modern computing systems have to operate in environments that are highly interconnected, highly unpredictable, are in a constant state of flux, in which there is no centralized point of control, and in which the constituent components are owned by a variety of stakeholders that each have their own aims and objectives. Relevant exemplars include the Web, Grid Computing, Peer-to-Peer systems, Pervasive Computing and many eCommerce applications. Now, I believe that all of these systems operate under the same conceptual model: (i) entities offer a variety of services in some form of institutional setting; (ii) other entities connect to these services (covering issues such as service discovery, service composition and service procurement); and (iii) entities enact services in a flexible and context sensitive manner. Moreover, I believe agent-based computing is an appropriate model computational for such systems (Jennings, 2000; Jennings 2001). In particular, autonomous agents are a natural way of viewing flexible service providers and consumers and the interactions between these autonomous components are naturally modeled as some form of economic trading process that, if successful, results in a service contract (or service level agreement) between the agents involved.