A Dynamic Coordination Mechanism Using Adjustable Autonomy

Agents in an organization need to coordinate their actions in order to reach the organizational goals. This research describes the relation between types of coordination and the autonomy of actors. In an experimental setting we show that there is not one best way to coordinate in all situations. The dynamics and complexity of, for example, crisis situations require a crisis management organization to work with dynamic types of coordination. In order to reach dynamic coordination we provide the actors with adjustable autonomy. Actors should be able to make decisions at different levels of autonomy and reason about the required level. We propose a way to implement this in a multi-agent system. The agent is provided with reasoning rules with which it can control the external influences on its decision-making.