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Autonomy in Multi-agent Systems: A Classification Attempt

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Agents and Computational Autonomy (AUTONOMY 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2969))

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Abstract

Despite the fact that autonomy is a central notion in most agents’ definitions and it is by itself a subject of research in the multi-agent field, there is not yet a commonly agreed definition of it. This paper attempts to classify the different forms of autonomy proposed in the literature by using the Vowels approach. After underlining some of the most relevant properties of autonomy, the classification is used to propose a comprehensive definition of autonomy. Moreover, we identify two different perspectives on autonomy, namely external and internal, and we show that the later can be used to build an integrated analysis grid of agent architectures for multi-agent systems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre SIMMO/SMA, ENS des Mines de Saint-Etienne, 158 Cours Fauriel, Saint-Etienne, F-42023 Cedex 2, France

    Cosmin Carabelea & Olivier Boissier

  2. Computer Science Department, “Politehnica” University of Bucharest, Spl. Independentei, nr. 313, Sect. 6, 77206, Bucharest, Romania

    Cosmin Carabelea & Adina Florea

Authors
  1. Cosmin Carabelea
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  2. Olivier Boissier
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  3. Adina Florea
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bath, BA2 7AY, Bath, UK

    Matthias Nickles

  2. School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Michael Rovatsos

  3. Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH, Softwarepark 21, 4232, Hagenberg, Austria

    Gerhard Weiss

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Carabelea, C., Boissier, O., Florea, A. (2004). Autonomy in Multi-agent Systems: A Classification Attempt. In: Nickles, M., Rovatsos, M., Weiss, G. (eds) Agents and Computational Autonomy. AUTONOMY 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2969. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25928-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25928-2_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22477-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-25928-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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