Abstract
An agent can send a message but never receive any response, which leads to handling problems. This issue, called the “empty mailbox problem”, is addressed in this chapter. The causes of this problem can lie in MAS low level layers, for instance in communication links, but also in the higher layers, for instance in the behavior of autonomous agents, which can independently choose not to respond. It is not an easy task for the designer/developer of the agent to determine what is to be done in such cases and how to do it. The proposed solution for handling this empty mailbox problem consists in introducing a new performative and its associated protocol, producing a generic way to handle the empty mailbox problem in the case of transient faults.
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Potiron, K., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A., Taillibert, P. (2013). Fault Tolerance for MAS Specific Faults. In: From Fault Classification to Fault Tolerance for Multi-Agent Systems. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5046-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5046-6_5
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