Agent Interaction Protocols and Flexible Agent Interaction in Dynamic Environments

Software agents are often seen as flexible goal-driven software technology suitable for dynamic environments such as business ecosystems. The inherently open and unpredictable nature of such environments, however, renders unsuitable many widely used agent design mechanisms, such as agent interaction protocols. This paper describes an approach which addresses the need for flexible inter-agent interactions. Our approach gives agents freedom of action and enhances their ability to respond to unexpected events in open environments. We base our argument on the limitations of protocol-based approaches used to formalize agent interaction. We then investigate the possibility of protocol-free agent interaction to enable flexible operation of agent systems in dynamic environments