Practical Applications of Virtual Organizations and Agent Technology

Abstract

Computation as interaction paradigm can be considered the most promising technological evolution in the areas of Computer Science and Communication in the last few years. Recent tendencies have conducted to the use of Virtual Organizations (VOs), which can be considered as a set of individuals and institutions that need to coordinate resources and services across institutional boundaries. Multi-agent systems (MAS) technology, which allows forming dynamic agent organizations, is particularly well suited as a support for the development of these open systems. PANGEA is an agent platform to develop open multi-agent systems, specifically those including organizational aspects such as virtual agent organizations. The platform allows the integral management of organizations and offers tools to the end user. Additionally, it includes a communication protocol based on the IRC standard, which facilitates implementation and remains robust even with a large number of connections.