Ayllu: Agent-Inspired Cooperative Services for Human Interaction

Abstract

Nowadays, people not only need to communicate, but also require to cooperate in order to achieve common goals. Thus, groupware applications are more complex, they have to satisfy new requirements of cooperation between people in many areas such as: organizations, industries or entertainment. Besides, due to the remarkable increment in the use of mobile devices and other technologies, groupware has found new environments to provide solutions and better services to end users. The Ayllu human cooperation model states that people must interact using well defined and structured protocols as rational cooperative agents do. This paper presents the Ayllu architecture, which is intended to develop groupware applications with a cooperative approach, called 5C paradigm; based on software agents that act as mediators between users working cooperatively. Cooperative services are constructed and executed by a mechanism called volatile group. Ayllu supports the execution of cooperative services, people can cooperate immersed in a pervasive environment, interact in an organized fashion, conform communities and pursue common objectives without concerning about their individual context.