Interaction devices for coordinating cooperative distributed systems

A cooperative distributed systems approach is an appropriate design paradigm for many applications, such as manufacturing control and network management. A fundamental problem in this paradigm is how to manage the interdependencies among the entities. The solution to this interdependency problem is called coordination. In this paper, coordination has been described in terms of structure and mechanism. This paper focuses on the mechanism aspect of the coordination. It is viewed as a composition of decision points and interaction devices directed to deal with different aspects of the interdependency problem. This paper also provides a coordinated, intelligent rational agent (CIR-Agent) model for cooperative distributed systems. The structure and the architecture of the agent are based on its mental state regarding achieving a goal. The agent's structure consists of four main components: problem-solver, pre-interaction, interaction, and execution. There is no global control of coordination allowed in the proposed model, for which the agents utilize different interaction devices to resolve their interdependencies.