Catalog of agent coordination patterns

Abstract

This paper surveys the current state of the art in agent-oriented software engineering, focusing on the area of coordinated multi-agent systems. In multi-agent systems, the interactions between the agents are crucial in determining the effectiveness of the system. Hence the adoption of an appropriate coordination mechanism is pivotal in the design of multi-agent system architectures. This paper does not focus on agent theory, rather on the development of an agent-oriented software engineering methodology, collaboration architectures and design patterns for collaboration. A catalog of coordination patterns inherent in multi-agent architectures is presented. Such patterns may be utilized in the architectural design stage of an agent-oriented software engineering methodology.