An agent design pattern classification scheme: capturing the notions of agency in agent design patterns

Agent technology is increasingly being used to develop software systems in different domains. Hence particular design problems are recurring in different multi-agent systems development projects. In order to enhance the reuse of proven solutions to recurring design problems, agent design patterns are being identified and documented. Understandably, most of the available work on agent design patterns reflect Object Oriented concepts (classes, objects, inheritance, etc) and exhibit an implementation bias. It is preferable for these patterns to reflect the notions of agency and be described at the right level of abstraction. In this paper, we present a new agent design pattern classification scheme that is structured to better reflect the notions of agency and allow varying levels of abstraction in describing agent design patterns. We also show how four different agent design patterns fit into our classification scheme.