Misc
| Authors | Lars Braubach, Alexander Pokahr, Winfried Lamersdorf, Karl-Heinz Krempels, P.-O. Woelk |
| Title | Time Synchronization for Process Flows in Multi-Agent Systems |
| Published in | Accepted at Second Seminar on Advanced Research in Electronic Business (EBR03) |
| Date | November 2003 |
| Abstract | Multi-agent systems are well suited for building complex software systems. A great deal of these complex systems include process flows that are concerned with time or are even time-critical. Therefore the relationships among the start, end and duration of external actions have to be considered in the software application. To be able to build such systems and test their behaviour adequately, it is often advantageous and sometimes necessary to simulate them in the run-up to their practical use. Testing and simulation of process flows with multi-agent systems requires synchronization of the participating agents with respect to the global simulation time. In this paper, a design proposal and a service implementation for testing and simulation is presented, which takes care of the special requirements imposed by multi-agent settings. This so called time service is implemented as a FIPA-compliant agent, and can be used to couple heterogeneous subsystems implemented on different agent platforms. The functionality of the time service, and its use to coordinate autonomous agents in simulation and testing runs is further clarified by a case study from the hospital domain. |
| Other formats | Din 1501 |