Holonic Multiagent Systems: A Foundation for the Organisation of Multiagent Systems

With the growing usage of the world-wide ICT networks, agent technologies and multiagent systems are attracting more and more attention, as they perform well in environments that are not necessarily well-structured and benevolent. Looking at the problem solving capacity of multiagent systems, emergent system behaviour is one of the most interesting phenomena, however, there is more to multiagent systems design than the interaction between a number of agents: For an effective system behaviour we need structure and organisation. But the organisation of a multiagent systems is difficult to specify at design time in the face of a changing environment. This paper presents basic concepts for a theory of holonic multiagent systems to both provide a methodology for the recursive modelling of agent groups, and allow for dynamic reorganisation during runtime.