Applying feedback control in adaptive replication mechanisms in fault tolerant multi-agent organizations

Effective fault-handling in emerging complex applications in large-scale MAS (Multi-agent Systems) requires the ability to dynamically adapt resource allocation and fault tolerance policies in response to changes in environment, user or application requirements, and available resources. This adaptation process incorporates an observation mechanism that transparently monitors the application's behaviors as well as the availability of resources, and adaptively reconfigures the system resources. This process is realized by a specific module which exploits the information resulting from monitoring. In this paper, we present an approach for adaptive replication. This approach uses an observation mechanism and a feedback control system within an adaptive replication infrastructure to support adaptive fault tolerance in multi-agent organizations. The main strategy used in our approach is to insert control theory methodology and analysis to adaptive replication. Thus, our approach provides a systematic and scientific method for implementing adaptive fault tolerance policies in MAS. Copyright 2006 ACM.