Plan-based replication for fault-tolerant multi-agent systems

The growing importance of multi-agent applications and the need for a higher quality of service in these systems justify the increasing interest in fault-tolerant multi-agent systems. In this article, we propose an original method for providing dependability in multi-agent systems through replication. Our method is different from other works because our research focuses on building an automatic, adaptive and predictive replication policy where critical agents are replicated to avoid failures. This policy is determined by taking into account the criticality of the plans of the agents, which contain the collective and individual behaviors of the agents in the application. The set of replication strategies applied at a given moment to an agent is then fine-tuned gradually by the replication system so as to reflect the dynamicity of the multi-agent system.