Leveraging agent properties to assure survivability of distributed multi-agent systems

Abstract

The nature of distributed multi-agent systems makes assuring their survivability under stress particularly challenging. However, the nature of distributed agent-based systems also brings the potential to address these particular challenges, and, indeed, to assure survivability to a degree beyond that possible in non-agent-based architectures. This extended abstract synopsizes a paper detailing approaches that are rooted in the essential properties of agent software architectures to assure the survivability of distributed agent-based systems. Specifically, the paper describes efforts under the DARPA UltraLog program to formulate a survivability argument based on properties of agent architectures. This extended abstract truncates many details from the original; interested readers are encouraged to contact the authors for the complete paper.