Models of е-work

Abstract Autonomous agents and active protocols have been identified in several PRISM research projects over the last decade as the two key elements of electronic work, defined as e-Work, in which humans, robots, and other autonomous systems collaborate for common goals. This article reviews how these elements are designed, and their role in collaborative control of distributed design projects, and in multi-agent based manufacturing and logistics networks. Several case studies are analyzed to illustrate new measures of parallelism, viability, and active middleware performance.