SARC2008 : Self-Adaptation for Robustness and Cooperation in Holonic Multi-Agent Systems
S.A.R.C. is an International Workshop to be held at the Second International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2008) Isola di San Servolo (Venice), Italy, October 20-24, 2008
Proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society
Holonic Multi-Agent Systems, mainly used and developed in manufacturing systems, are more and more used in other fields such as complex system simulations, information systems, cooperative work...
Holonic Multi-Agent Systems are flexible; the only strict obligation is to follow a pyramidal structure. They really have an interesting potential, however, methods and tools to facilitate their design and management, in particular regarding to their Self-Adaptation and Self-Organization properties, are required. Indeed, the main characteristics of an Holonic Multi-Agent System, that are the robustness and the cooperation, are dependent of the dynamic of the multi-agent system.
Robustness enables Holonic Multi-Agent Systems to cope with perturbations, faults and hard constraints. Implementing such a property is typically a self-organization problem where regeneration of faulty agents, generation of new agents and/or migration of agents between Holonic Multi-Agent Systems are some examples of the proposed answers. Cooperation means that even if each agent has classically its own goals and strategies in the pyramidal organization, all agents taken together have to collectively lead the Holonic Multi-Agent System to its intended global goal. This property is generally processed by letting the agents locally and autonomously modifying their roles or behaviors, by adapting their strategies to work with other agents; it is a self-adaptation property.
Emergence of behaviors, roles or organization is a reality and a need in Holonic Multi-Agent Systems and has to be analyzed and controlled.
First International Workshop on Self-Adaptation for Robustness and Cooperation in HOLOMAS proposes a framework to discuss on models and methods linked to robustness and cooperation in dynamic systems, enabling emergence of new behaviors and sub-organizations. The workshop also aims to lead to a proposition of an Holonic Multi-Agent System model including the models discussed.
Context
Holonic multiagent systems (Holomas) are pyramidal systems where notions of robustness and cooperation between the autonomous agents are key issues. That is why these systems have been and is used in a manufacturing system area, where notion of robustness is essential. Cooperation between agents of a holomas is also essential in this context: as the main objective is to manage the manufacturing system, or a workflow system, autonomous agents have to collectively lead the Holomas to its global goal. Interesting propositions tackling the notion of robustness and cooperation have been proposed in the manufacturing system area, however, very few of them take advantage of the self-adaptation and self-organization of dynamic systems, like multi-agent systems. On the other side, works on self-organization and emergence propose interesting methods and models to deal with the robustness and the cooperation in dynamic systems, but some of these approaches have identified the need of a multi-level control or a control from an upper level.
This workshop will focus on models and methods linked to robustness and cooperation in dynamic systems and in holonic multi-agent systems, enabling emergence of new behaviors and sub-organizations. This workshop aims at encouraging researchers who come from the Information Technologies field and who have some interesting and rigorous works on robustness and on cooperation, based on principles of self-adaptation and self-organization, to propose their contributions in an holomas context.
Likewise, this workshop aims at encouraging researchers working in holonic manufacturing systems domain to compare their works with those which come from the IT dimension.
Topics
A particular attention will be given to papers which address case studies, and which present self-adaptation or self-organization mechanisms in holonic multi-agent systems.
Topics of interest: We seek contributions on ongoing innovative work and applications on robustness and cooperation issues based on Self-Adaptation and Self-Organization capacities, suitable to holonic multi-agent systems. Specifically, the workshop topics include, but are not limited to:
holonic multi-agent system
fault-recovery in holonic multi-agent systems
models of cooperation and coordination for autonomous holonic agents
predicting and controlling emergence of behavior in holonic multi-agent systems
self-adaptation of roles and/or services in holonic multi-agent systems
delegation tasks, reconfiguration tasks in holonic multi-agent systems
self-organization of pyramidal-structured holonic multi-agent systems
case studies that shows self-adaptation or self-organization in holonic multi-agent systems
aspects of holonic multi-agent systems
models of self-management for holonic multi-agent systems
models and meta-models of self-organizing holonic multi-agent systems
models and meta-models for hybrid multi-agent systems
Information
Detailled program and presentations are accessible...
