Integration of Heterogeneous Systems as Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

Systems integration is a difficult matter particularly when its components are varied. The problem becomes even more difficult when such components are heterogeneous such as humans, robots and software systems. Currently, the humans are regarded as users of artificial systems (robots and software systems). This has several disadvantages such as: (1) incoherence of artificial systems exploitation where humans' roles are not clear and (2) vain research of a user's universal model. In this paper, we adopted a cooperative approach where the system's components are regarded as being of the same level and they cooperate for the service of the global system. We concretized such approach by considering humans, robots and software systems as autonomous agents assuming roles in an organization. The latter will be implemented as a multi-agent system developed using a multi-agent development methodology.