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In order to emphasize the fact that the agent in its activity uses and processes themodel
(
m
) of its surrounding environment, as well as to distinguish the present approach to
the structure of an agent from other approaches, we will refer to it as
the architecture
of the M-agent
. This informal approach and a description of the architecture of the
M-agent, which will be presented later, is based on the concepts formed in the years
1990-1999 and presented in works [30, 36, 38, 45, 61].
Other approaches to a more formal description of an agent or those associated with
practice have been developed alongside the concept of the A-agent. They include,
inter alia, such concepts as
Agent-0
[161] or
architecture BDI
[154]. Based on the
results of the research on the development of the agent's architecture, numerous
studies have been carried out on the application of the concept of an agent in different
fields [73, 74].
3.4 The Model Based on the M-agent Architecture
For the purpose ofmore precise and accurate description of agent systems, we propose
to introduce the following terms and notions for area:
a
—an agent (any definite active element of the system which has been considered
informally as an agent, meeting the postulates from Sect.
3.3
).
A
—a set of agents existing at a given moment in the system later also referred to as
the configuration of agents or the society of agents (
a
∈
A
).
Various kind of agents often exist in the system. While defining and analyzing such
societies of agents, it is convenient to introduce a division or rather the grouping
of agents into kinds, later referred to as types of agents. It gives the possibility of
easier defining the agents, using a description of common features of an agent within
a given type. What is more, sometimes it is necessary to consider a given agent (in
the society of agents) in relation to its identity in a group. Therefore, the notation
a
i
denotes
a
g
ent i
of the
type
g
.
Let us introduce the following definition of the notion of an environment connected
with the activity of agents:
v
—the environment of agents. We will refer to the environment
v
as a triad:
v
=
(
E
,
A
,
C
),
(3.1)
where
E
is space,
A
is a valid set (configuration) of agents operating (existing) in the environment,
C
is relationship (connection) between the space
E
and the agents which belong
to the configuration
A
. For example, the relationship
C
may define the present
location of agents in space for certain multi-agent systems.
V
v
∈
V
is a set of environments considered in the system (
).
