A Formal Framework of AOC

4.6. Summary

For an AOC system, autonomous entities and an environment are its key elements. Interactions between entities and their environment are the force that drives an AOC system to evolve towards certain desired states. Self-organization is the essential process of its working mechanism. 1n this chapter, we have formally defined the above notions as well as their intentions, and have provided a general framework for an AOC system. Based on the framework, we know how to build an AOC system, given a problem to be solved or a complex system to be modeled. Specifically, we have better knowledge of:

• 1. How to formally characterize autonomous entities?

• 2. How to design and characterize an environment based on a task at hand?

• 3. How to design the interactions between autonomous entities and their environment in order to facilitate the aggregation of behavioral effects of entities?

• 4. How to design the primitive behaviors and behavioral rules of entities in order to achieve the self-organization of entities and emerge certain desired states or patterns?