A Cooperation Model for Autonomous Agents

We present the cooperation model underlying the layered architecture interrap; interrap supports the modeling of autonomous agents interacting in complex, dynamic environments. The basic elements of the model, i.e., a negotiation model and a theory of joint plans, as well as their operationalization in the cooperative planning layer of the architecture are described. In particular, this work extends earlier research by (i) providing a domain-independent operational framework for cooperation and negotiation, and by (ii) making a clear separation between the meta level (the negotiation process, protocols, and strategies) and the object level (joint plans and their processing) of cooperation.

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