Environment as Active Support of Interaction

Abstract. Indirect interactions have been shown to be of interest in MultiAgent Systems (MAS), in the simulation area as well as in real ap-plications. The environment is also emerging as a first-order abstraction. Intuitively, the environment being a common medium for the agents, it should be a suitable paradigm to provide an infrastructure for both di-rect and indirect interactions. However, it still lacks of a consensus on how the two relate to each other, and how the environment can support effectively notions as communication or awareness. We propose a general and operational model, Environment as Active Support of Interaction, that enables the agents to actively participate in the definition of their perceptions. Then, we show how the model provides a suitable framework for the regulation of the MAS interactions.