Agent
A computational entity such as a software program or a robot that can be viewed as perceiving and acting upon its environment and that it is autonomous in that its behavior at least partially depends on its own experience.
Weiss,
Muliagent
Systems
Autonomous
An agent that acts autonomously means that to some extent
they have control over their behavior and can act without
the intervention of humans and other systems.
Decentralise
To move the control of an organisation or government from a
single place to several smaller ones.
Deliberation
This is
the first stage performed whilst doing practical reasoning.
It is the process of deciding which goal to aim for from a
selection.
Effectoric
capabilities
These
are the set of pre-determined actions that a particular
agent can perform whilst trying to solve a
task.
Environment
The
particular situation or system that an agent is acting in.
Intelligent
agent
An agent that pursues its goals and tasks so as to optimize
certain pre-defined performance measures. The agent, given
the information it has and its perceptual and effectual
capabilities, can act flexibly and rationally in a variety
of environmental circumstances.
Weiss,
Muliagent
Systems
Means-ends
reasoning
This is
the second part of practical reasoning. Once a particular
state has been chosen to work towards, means-ends reasoning
is the process of deciding how to get to that particular
state.
Modularity
Property of a system, such that individual components can
be examined, modified and maintained independently of the
remainder of the system.
Neural
networks
A
machine-learning technique that simulates a network of
communicating nerve cells.
Nature.com,
Source
Optimisation
Tuning variables to make a situation have the best possible
outcome.
Pheromones
Chemicals used by insects and some mammals to allow
communication.
Precondition
A condition in the environment that must be true before an
agent can perform a particular task. For example, an agent
cannot perform the task 'open door' if the precondition
'door unlocked' is not true.
RAPPID
System
Responsible
Agents for Product-Process Integrated Design.
Swarm
A MAS where the agents are simple and the interest derives
from the group behaviours that arise from
interaction.