Authors:
Davide Calvaresi
1
;
Kevin Appoggetti
2
;
Luca Lustrissimi
2
;
Mauro Marinoni
3
;
Paolo Sernani
2
;
Aldo F. Dragoni
2
and
Michael Schumacher
4
Affiliations:
1
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Italy
;
2
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
;
3
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy
;
4
University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Switzerland
Keyword(s):
Software Engineering, Negotiation, Multi-Agent Systems, Cyber-Physical Systems, Real-Time Systems.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Negotiation and Interaction Protocols
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) require a multitude of components interacting among themselves and with the
users to perform automatic actions, usually under unpredictable or uncertain conditions. Multi-Agent Systems
(MAS) have emerged over the years as one of the major technological paradigms regulating interactions and
negotiations among autonomous entities running under heterogeneous conditions. As such, MAS have the
potential to support CPS in implementing a highly reconfigurable distributed thinking. However, some gaps
are still present between MAS’ features and the strict requirements of CPS. The most relevant is the lack of
reliability, which is mainly due to specific features characterizing negotiation protocols. This paper presents
a systematic literature review of MAS negotiation protocols aiming at providing a comprehensive overview
of their strengths and limitations, examining both the assumptions and requirements set during their development.
While this work confirms the po
tential of MAS in regulating the interactions among CPS components,
the findings also highlight the absence of real-time compliance in current negotiation protocols. Strongly
characterizing CPS, the capability to face strict time constraints could bridge the gap between MAS and CPS.
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