A proposal for structuring the coordination space of multiagent systems

Nowadays there is some confusion around the terms used to conceptualize multiagent coordination mechanisms. We understand that the characterizations in coordination mechanisms mix two distinctive aspects of coordination: the result of coordination and the behavioral mode that agents use to accomplish a given result of coordination. In this paper, we propose a structuring of the coordination space mechanisms composed by two dimensions; results and modes. The mode dimension, in particular, includes one kind of behavior, which has not been extensively explored, which is the ability to improvise in order to achieve the aimed results of coordination. We analyze and classify an extensive set of works on coordination, finding their places in our space of coordination mechanisms. This classification brings to us some very interesting conclusions, including the one that the ability to improvise is generally represented, implicitly or explicitly, in all kinds of agents endowed with coordination mechanisms.