Exception Diagnosis in Open Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

Open multi-agent systems (MAS) are decentralized and highly distributed systems that consist of a large number of loosely coupled autonomous agents. Diagnosing exceptions in such systems is a complex task due to the distributed nature of their data and their control. This complexity is exacerbated in open environments where independently developed autonomous agents interact with each other in order to achieve their goals. Inevitably, exceptions will occur in such MAS and these exceptions can arise at one of three levels, namely environmental, knowledge and social levels. In this paper we propose a novel exception diagnosis system that is able to analyse and detect exceptions effectively. The proposed architecture consists of specialised exception diagnosis agents called sentinel agents. The sentinel agents are equipped with knowledge of observable abnormal situations, and their underlying causes.

Exception representation and management in open multi-agent systems

“…Exceptions may occur due to a number of reasons such as: program bugs; operating system resources not being available; I/O errors; unexpected conditions within a participating element; a message lost; protocol violations; malicious interference with normal operation; deadline failure; deadlock; conflicting attitudes exhibited by agents; service errors, and so on. We must have an effective exception detection and diagnosis [14] mechanism to handle such exceptions where environment is open and highly dynamic.…”

“…The proposed exception ontology is a domain independent ontology. The ontology was implemented as part of research project and applied to the implementations of the FIPA Travel Specification case study [4,15].…”

Ontological Model for Exception Management in Open Multi-Agent Systems

“…Exceptions may occur due to a number of reasons such as: program bugs; operating system resources not being available; I/0 errors; unexpected conditions within a participating element; a message lost; protocol violations; malicious interference with normal operation; deadline failure; deadlock; conflicting attitudes exhibited by agents; service errors, and so on. We must have an effective exception detection and diagnosis [6] mechanism to handle such exceptions where environment is open and highly dynamic.…”

Exception Diagnosis for Agent-Oriented Services

“…PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE Our proposed architecture [32] provides a framework for diagnosing exception in a service-oriented MAS. In order to offload the burden on agents of implementing the complex exception diagnosis capabilities, the proposed architecture is realized using sentinel agents.…”

“…For an exception diagnosis process in agent-oriented services to work effectively there must be a uniform representation and unambiguous semantics for these exceptions. This is where an ontological representation of exceptions and agents' actions comes into play [2].…”