Collaboration rules for autonomous software agents

Can autonomous software agents that are distributed over a computer network collaborate effectively? Both empirical evidence and theory suggest that they can. Moreover, there seem to be simple rules for designing problem-solving Ž organizations in which collaboration among such agents is automatic and scale-effective adding agents tends to improve . solution-quality; adding computers tends to improve solution-speed . This paper develops some of these rules for off-line Ž . problems and argues that they can be extended for the on-line real-time control of power systems. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.