In this chapter, we discuss the design of adaptive hierarchical organi- zations for multi-agent systems (MAS). Hierarchical organizations have a number of advantages such as their ability to handle complex problems and their scalabil- ity to large organizations. By introducing adaptivity in the structure of hierarchical MAS organizations, we enable agents to balance resources in their organization. We will first provide a number of generic principles for the design of hierarchical MAS organizations. We show how these principles are used to design three different hierarchical organizations for a search and rescue task in the RoboCupRescue sim- ulation environment. The first two of these organizations are static, and the third is able to adapt its structure. An empirical study on the performance of these three or- ganizations shows that the dynamic organization performs better than the two static organizations.
['Mattijs Ghijsen', 'W.N.H. Jansweijer', 'Bob J. Wielinga']
Adaptive hierarchical multi-agent organizations