What is the generic structure of Multi Agent System (MAS) ?

Generic structure of a Multi-Agent System (MAS):

• Multiple autonomous agents: each agent has its own capabilities, knowledge, and decision-making.

• Diverse objectives: agents may have individual, shared, or conflicting goals that drive their behavior.

• Communication and interaction: agents exchange messages, negotiate, coordinate, or cooperate to accomplish tasks.

• Environment: a shared environment that agents perceive and act upon, providing context, resources, and constraints.

• Coordination mechanisms: protocols, norms, planning, or conflict-resolution methods that align agent actions toward system-level behavior.

• Organization/topology: how agents are arranged (centralized, decentralized, hierarchical, or fully distributed) affecting communication and control.

• Example: a team of robots with individual routes that communicate to avoid collisions and reassign tasks for efficient overall performance.

Key insight: a multi-agent system is defined by multiple interacting agents plus their communication and coordination, not by the number of objectives of a single agent.