Adaptation in a distributed environment

AgentWise, DistrinetDepartment of Computer Science, K.U.LeuvenCelstijnenlaan 200AB-3001 Leuven, BelgiumKoenraad.Mertens@cs.kuleuven.ac.beTom.Holvoet@cs.kuleuven.ac.beYolande.Berbers@cs.kuleuven.ac.beAbstract. A non-trivial application environment is a inherent part ofmost multiagent systems. When a multiagent system is distributed overa number of different hosts (i.e. more than one execution environmentis used), the application environment has to be distributed also. In thispaper we discuss how a distributed application environment can dynam-ically adapt itself. Our focus is on a distributed application environmentin which mobile agents move around and are aware of the distributednature of the system. Using this knowledge, the agents try to adapttheir behavior in order to exploit the characteristics of a distributedenvironment, giving the environment indications of which layout wouldmake the application more efficient. We present a number of causes thatcan trigger the application environment to change its distribution layout.These changes are not only invoked by the agents (like other, application-specific actions), but there are also external events that can trigger suchoperations and the application environment itself has the ability to pro-actively change its distribution layout over the different hosts. Using onespecific application (solving distributed constraint satisfaction problems)as an example, we indicate that these changes to the distribution havetheir use and can be incorporated easily into the structure of a multiagentsystem.