Holonic Multiagent Systems

With the growing usage of the world-wide information technology networks, agent technologies and multiagent systems are attracting more and more attention, as they perform well in environments that are not necessarily well-structured and benevolent. Looking at the problem solving capacity of multiagent systems, emergent system behaviour is one of the most interesting phenomena. But there is more to multiagent system design than the interaction between a number of agents: For effective system behaviour we need structure and organisation. Moreover, it is difficult to specify the organisation of a multiagent systems in a changing environment at design time. The theory of holonic multiagent systems promises both, to provide a methodology for the recursive modelling of agent groups and to allow for dynamic reorganisation during runtime.