Table 1
Characteristics of agent-based systems.
| Decentralization | Agents are distributed and they communicate with each other exchanging messages over a network. |
| Coordination and cooperation | Agents can interact with each other and coordinate their actions in order to satisfy their design objectives. |
| Scalability and flexibility | MASs being distributed and loosely coupled computing systems can be adapted according to the problem size and agents can be replaced by other agents or new ones may enter the system. |
| Adaptability | Agents in a MAS are able to adapt their tasks and to react to changing environment conditions. |
| Computational Efficiency | Agents can operate asynchronously and in parallel, solving sub-tasks separately and exploiting parallel computation. Thus, they provide high efficiency and increased overall speed. |
| Robustness | MASs provide a high level of robustness and fault-tolerance, as consequence the failure of one or more agents does not necessarily make the overall system useless. |
| Leanness | Agents in a MAS should be simples with few functionalities avoid complex behaviours. In this way agents are less expensive than a complex agent and easier to maintain. |
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