Towards reliable large-scale multi-agent systems
Résumé
In this paper, we propose an approach for fault-tolerance of multi-agent systems (MASs). The starting idea is the application of replication strategies to agents, the most critical agents being replicated to prevent failures. As criticality of agents may evolve during the course of computation and problem solving, and as resources are bounded, we need to dynamically and automatically adapt the number of replicas of agents, in order to maximize their reliability and availability. We will describe our approach and related mechanisms for evaluating the criticality of a given agent and for deciding how to parameterize the strategy (e.g., number of replicas). We also will report on experiments conducted with our prototype architecture (named DimaX).