Agent-Environment Interaction in MAS - Introduction and Survey

Role of Agent Middleware in Teaching Distributed Systems and Agent Technologies

“…There are some papers that present experiences in developing and using a variety of agent environments. For example, [3] and [4] provide an extensive overview of such environments, but there are only a few papers describing effects and students'/teachers' experiences in delivering distributed systems and agent-oriented courses. An interesting approach for revitalizing introductory undergraduate CS curricula through the integration of agent-based modeling and multi-agent systems is presented in [5].…”

Efficient environment management for distributed simulation of large‐scale situated multi‐agent systems

“…Managing the environment in MASs is a multifaced problem. Many issues are related to environment representation and definition, agent–environment communication and interaction patterns, distribution concerns, engineering practices and so forth . Although environmental aspects could be explicitly addressed by the modeller, it is more convenient to manage the environment as a system‐wide concept, thus promoting it as a first‐class entity directly provided by the multi‐agent infrastructure.…”

“…An artifact is used as a first‐class entity to represent anything in a MAS that is not modelled as an agent. Agents represent the proactive and autonomous components of the system, whereas artifacts are passive and reactive . CArtAgO is a Java‐based open‐source software that provides development and runtime support to artifacts‐based computational environments.…”

“…A broad range of studied systems belonging to, for example, biology, sociology, wildfires, economy and engineering domains, naturally owns a spatial character, leading to the concept of situated agents where each agent possesses spatial coordinates and is embedded and operates in a hosting environment (territory). Although there exists a general agreement about the importance of spatial environments in multi‐agent systems (MASs) , in many agencies (e.g. Jade or Zeus), the environment either is not a built‐in component or has responsibilities that are kept at a minimum .…”