Basic Concepts

Overview

Among several agent-oriented approaches [54–59] proposed in the literature, the SCOP Framework uses a modified version of organizational the Agent/Group/Role (AGR) approach proposed in [55]. We call this approach Agent/Role/Environment approach.

Agents

Agents are active, communicating entities playing roles within environments. Agents play at least one role in a environment, but may hold multiple roles and be a member of multiple environments as well. However, no constraints are placed upon the architectures, the cognitive abilities and/or the mental issues of agents.

Environments

Environments identify contexts for patterns of activities (i.e., roles) that can be shared by sets of agents (i.e., they group together agents working together). Agents may communicate, if and only if, they belong to the same environment. Environments are organizational structures [60] where the interactions make an aggregate of agents a functionally coherent whole. Moreover, environments may establish boundaries as well. Agents that do not belong to an environments may not know its structure.

Roles

Roles are abstract representations of functional positions of agents in a group. A role describes the responsibilities associated to it, the constraints that agents need to satisfy in order to obtain that role, and the benefits that agents would obtain by playing that role.

References