A real-time multi-agent system architecture for e-commerce applications

This paper describes an architecture for real-time multi-agent systems (RTMAS) that builds upon an existing real-time CORBA architecture. The RTMAS architecture provides real-time agent services for real-time agent communication, real-time agent scheduling and real-time agent facilitation. These services work together to allow for the expression and enforcement of real-time agent interactions. The paper describes the design of these services, along with a prototype implementation of the RTMAS architecture that is based upon an existing agent communication implementation.