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Towards next generation coordination infrastructures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2015

Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar ,
Carles Sierra ,
Josep Ll. Arcos ,
Maite Lopez-Sanchez  and
Inmaculada Rodriguez
Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Carles Sierra
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Josep Ll. Arcos
Affiliation:
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e-mail: jar@iiia.csic.es, sierra@iiia.csic.es, arcos@iiia.csic.es
Maite Lopez-Sanchez
Affiliation:
MAiA Department, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Gran Via de les Corts, Catalanes 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: maitedopez@ub.edu, inrna@ub.edu
Inmaculada Rodriguez
Affiliation:
MAiA Department, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Gran Via de les Corts, Catalanes 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: maitedopez@ub.edu, inrna@ub.edu
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Abstract

Coordination infrastructures play a central role in the engineering of multiagent systems. Since the advent of agent technology, research on coordination infrastructures has produced a significant number of infrastructures with varying features. In this paper, we review the the state-of-the-art coordination infrastructures with the purpose of identifying open research challenges that next generation coordination infrastructures should address. Our analysis concludes that next generation coordination infrastructures must address a number of challenges: (i) to become socially aware, by facilitating human interaction within a MAS; (ii) to assist agents in their decision making by providing decision support that helps them reduce the scope of reasoning and facilitates the achievement of their goals; and (iii) to increase openness to support on-line, fully decentralised design and execution. Furthermore, we identify some promising approaches in the literature, together with the research issues worth investigating, to cope with such challenges.

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Articles
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The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 30 , Special Issue 4: Challenges in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering , September 2015 , pp. 435 - 453
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2015 

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