Domain-Expert Configuration of Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems in Industrial Use Cases

Based on the analysis of two real-world use cases for agriculture and manufacturing, we suggest that Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are a viable option to interconnect and coordinate devices, services, machine-learning systems, and people in industrial scenarios. We propose and implement an architecture based on three components: an infrastructure that manages Web of Things environments and executes Hypermedia MAS, a visual development environment for programming agents, and a goal specification interface for end-users. While the infrastructure manages information flows between the system components and provides an environment for agents, the visual language enables domain experts to configure the behaviour of the system leveraging agent-oriented programming abstractions both at design time and run time, and the goal specification interface permits users to delegate goals to the running Hypermedia MAS while re-using domain vocabulary.