AUTONOMOUS COMPOUND AGENTS

In a rule-based processor, populations of component agents are enabled to self-assemble into compound agents such as to give a degree of distributed artificial intelligence in a relatively simple system. The majority of component agents have top and bottom decision structures into which requesting agents can insert rules: the rule selected by a decision structure is the one which is valid following evaluation of a priority criteria and leads to the placing of a marker from the selecting agent to the requesting agent. With the two decision structures, behaviour trees may be formed from the top down or the bottom up, as required by the instantaneous situation to which the compound agent is responding.