| Title |
Cognitive Stigmergy: A Framework Based on Agents and Artifacts |
| Authors |
Alessandro Ricci, Andrea Omicini, Mirko Viroli, Luca Gardelli, Enrico Oliva |
| Type |
In Workshop Proceedings |
| Booktitle |
3rd International Workshop on Environments for Multi-Agent Systems
(E4MAS 2006) |
| Pages |
44--60 |
| Address |
AAMAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan |
| Editor |
Weyns, Danny and Parunak, H. Van Dyke and Michel, Fabien |
| Year |
2006 |
| Abstract |
Stigmergy has been variously adopted in MASs (multi-agent systems)
and in other fields as well—as a technique for realising forms of
emergent coordination in societies composed by a large amount of
typically simple, ant-like, non-rational agents. In this article
we introduce a conceptual and engineering framework for exploring
the use of stigmergy in the context of societies composed by cognitive/ rational agents, as a means for supporting high-level, knowledge-based
social activities. We refer to this kind of stigmergy as cognitive
stigmergy. Cognitive stigmergy is based on the use of suitable engineered
artifacts as tools populating the agent working environment, and
which agents share and rationally use for their individual goals.
Artifacts are first-class entities representing the environment that
mediates agent interaction and enables emergent coordination: as
such, they encapsulate and enact the stigmergic mechanisms and the
shared knowledge upon which emergent coordination processes are based.
In this seminal paper, we introduce an agent-based framework for
cognitive stigmergy based on artifacts. After discussing the main
conceptual issues—the notion of cognitive stigmergy, the role of
artifacts—, we sketch an abstract architecture for cognitive stigmergy,
and we consider its implementation upon the TuCSoN agent coordination
infrastructure. |
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