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Evaluation of Environment Contextual Services
in Multiagent Systems
Flavien Balbo 1 , 2 , Julien Saunier 3 , and Fabien Badeig 1 , 2
1 Universite Paris-Dauphine, LAMSADE, Place du Marechal de Lattre de Tassigny
Paris, France
2 Universite Paris Est, IFSTTAR, GRETTIA
2 Rue de la Butte Verte, 93160 Noisy le Grand, France
3 Universite Paris Est, IFSTTAR, LEPSiS, 58 Bld Lefebvre, 75015 Paris, France
{ balbo,badeig } @lamsade.dauphine.fr, saunier@ifsttar.fr
Abstract. The environment is a powerful first-order abstraction in Multi-Agent
Systems (MAS), as well as a critical building block. The agents interact in their
environment and the effects of their actions are observed and evaluated through
this environment. The local complexity of the agents depends on its management
of the interaction and action processes. If the environment carries out a part of
this processes, the complexity of the agents is reduced. This delegating process
implies a centralization of a part of the MAS computations inside the environment
and therefore a flexible way to exchange information and to coordinate the agents.
In this paper, we present the modeling of an environment which supports
both communication services and simulation services: multi-party communica-
tions (communication) and contextual activation (simulation). We evaluate the
cost of these environment services and compare it to the execution of the same
tasks inside the agents. The evaluation and comparison are done theoretically and
empirically for communication and simulation. We also investigate the clustering
of the agents in several environments.
Keywords: Environment, Evaluation, Communication, Activation.
1
Introduction
In [16], the authors give the following definition of a multi-agent system (MAS) en-
vironment: “The environment is a first-class abstraction that provides the surrounding
conditions for agents to exist and that mediates both the interaction among agents and
the access to resources” . The environment is a critical building block in the multi-
agent systems that encapsulates its own responsibilities. The agents interact in their en-
vironment and the effects of their actions are observed and evaluated through
this environment. Thus, the environment provides observability and accessibility
services.
The relation between the environment and the agents is traditionally based on a per-
ception - decision - action cycle [15] which is repeated by the agents during their life
time. The three phases of the cycle are executed in each agent. The perception being
the agent ability to observe its environment, its result is the computation of what can be
 
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