Resource coordination in single agent and multiagent systems

An intelligent multiagent system includes a number of software agents interacting to solve a problem. Various agents are responsible for planning different tasks. These tasks must be coordinated to solve complex problems. A number of reasons exist for which coordination among the agents is necessary, and numerous issues have to be tackled to achieve efficient coordination. The focus of this paper is resource coordination. When an agent lacks a resource to achieve a goal, it may choose one of two options. It can acquire another resource, or it can change the goal so that it can achieve it with the resource at hand. We present a cost-benefit analysis that can be performed to determine if the requesting agent receives the requested resource. We present empirical results that show the relative goal satisfaction achieved in the PRODIGY planner with and without resource coordination. We have implemented a multiagent system called COMAS that implements resource coordination