Agent Design Patterns for Assistance Systems in Various Domains - a Survey

The paradigm of multi-agent systems is used in various application scenarios like manufacturing control or multi-agent assistance systems that aim at providing assistance to the user of the system in a specific task or situation. With an increasing number of applications of multi agent assistance systems in the industrial automation domain, the different architectures of these applications can be compared and differences and similarities can be identified. This paper presents the results of the literature review of 18 agent-based assistance systems from different domains. Within the reviewed architectures, seven different agent types could be identified. In a further step, design patterns based on the application domain and the level of automation have been identified and discussed. These design patterns can be used to facilitate the development of future multi agent assistance systems.