A composite self-organisation mechanism in an agent network

Abstract

Self-organisation provides a suitable paradigm for developing autonomic web-based applications, e.g., e-commerce. Towards this end, in this paper, a composite self-organisation mechanism in an agent network is proposed. Based on self-organisation principles, this mechanism enables agents to dynamically adapt relations with other agents, i.e., change the underlying network structure, to achieve efficient task allocation. The proposed mechanism integrates a trust model to assist agents in reasoning with whom to adapt relations and employs a multi-agent Q-learning algorithm for agents to learn how to adapt relations. Moreover, in this mechanism, it is considered that the agents are connected by weighted relations, instead of crisp relations. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.