A indústria carece de sistemas produtivos que atendam a diversidade de demanda do mercado, com eficiência e capacidade de adaptação rápida. As novas soluções para estas necessidades remetem ao uso de novas tecnologias de automação. Porém, a maioria dos sistemas integrados de manufatura implantados em indústria possui seu gerenciamento por controladores lógicos programáveis, assim como suas interligações elétricas e lógicas de controle. A tese proposta faz uso de Sistemas Multiagentes em controladores lógicos programáveis, para que estes possam controlar seus sistemas de manufatura, propiciando-lhes os requisitos de diversidade, agilidade e auto-organização no meio produtivo. A comprovação desta tese se dá pelo método desenvolvido para que tal implementação aconteça, bem como pela análise de abrangência deste método, a fim de verificar em quais cenários ele é eficaz. O método proposto analisa o controlador lógico programável e descreve uma rotina de ações a serem seguidas para que ele se insira em Sistemas Multiagentes, valendo-se das funcionalidades que um agente pode oferecer. Sua análise de aplicação ocorreu em três cenários distintos, onde a abordagem por sistemas auto-organizáveis apresentou melhores resultados para atingir os requisitos de diversidade, agilidade e auto-organização, a partir de sistemas multiagentes interagindo com os controladores lógicos programáveis e suas lógicas locais. / The industry needs production systems that attend the diversity of market demand, with efficiency and fast adaptability. The new solutions to these needs refer to the use of new automation technologies. However, most integrated manufacturing systems deployed in industry have its management by programmable logic controllers as well as their electrical interconnections and logics of control. The thesis proposal indicates the use of multi-agent systems on programmable logic controllers, so that they are able to control their manufacturing systems, addressing the requirements of diversity, self-organizing and agility to the productive environment. The proof of this thesis is given by the method developed for such implementation to happen, as well as analysis of the scope of this method in order to verify in what scenarios it is effective. The proposed method analyzes the programmable logic controller and describes a routine of actions to follow so that it may enter into a multi-agent system, using the features that an agent can offer. Its application analysis took place in three different scenarios where the approach by self-organizing systems showed better results for achieving the requirements of diversity, agility and self-organization from multi-agent systems interacting with programmable logic controllers and their local logic.

Intelligent robots are rational agents. The rationality of robots working cooperatively is significantly different from robots working independently. Cooperation between intelligent robots requires the high level of reasoning and complex interactions for successful operations. The required reasoning process includes knowledge representation and sharing as well as the ability to understand the context of a situation. The reasoning process heavily influences on the planning of deciding what actions need to be taken. Goal deliberation and planning is the process that deals with those requirements. This dissertation investigates the problem of goal deliberation and planning to enable such cooperation between goal-oriented intelligent robots, working as a team. The dissertation then proposes a multi-robot system model that embraces results of the investigation. The proposed model is realized on the top of the platform ‘robot operating system’ (ROS). The implemented system, named ‘goal-oriented multi agent systems’ (GOMAS), is demonstrated with the computer game, StarCraft II. Units in StarCraft II are individually controlled by the GOMAS robots and work cooperatively to attain a set of goals given from operators. The demonstration with the three different scenarios validates that the GOMAS system successfully and efficiently deliberates and plans the given goals.

Transições sociotecnológicas são processos de modificação e substituição de regimes sociotecnológicos, estruturas sociais que englobam sistemas tecnológicos e produtivos, bem como políticas públicas, sistemas econômicos e significados simbólicos associados. A transição sociotecnológica tem sido discutida como um caminho para o desenvolvimento sustentável, dada a possibilidade de substituição de regimes sociotecnologicos vigentes por regimes que representem menores impactos sociais e ambientais. Apesar da atenção que a transição sustentável tem recebido em anos recentes, observa-se na literatura uma lacuna no estudo da função de agência na transição. O objetivo da presente pesquisa é analisar a agência no processo de transição sociotecnológica sustentável, e a principal contribuição está na proposição de um modelo conceitual estruturado para a explicação desta agência. No desenvolvimento do modelo adotou-se a perspectiva multinível, a qual estuda a transição a partir de três diferentes níveis de análise: nicho, regime e cenário. O modelo está consolidado em três ideias centrais, que se constituíram em hipóteses de trabalho no desenvolvimento da pesquisa. Propõe-se como primeira hipótese que a agência na transição seria distribuída, resultando de uma ação coletiva do nicho. Propõe-se também como segunda hipótese de trabalho que a agência seria exercida por meio da construção pelos atores nicho de um sistema de narrativas, o qual direcionaria as expectativas dos demais atores, bem como o compromisso resultante destas expectativas. Por fim, propõe-se como terceira hipótese que expectativas e compromisso seriam continuamente ajustados pelo desempenho do sistema, e a principal medida de desempenho na transição tecnológica estaria na capacidade do nicho em desenvolver aprendizado. Adotou-se no desenvolvimento da pesquisa uma abordagem multimétodo, a partir de um posicionamento epistemológico de complexidade organizacional; outra contribuição significativa de pesquisa está no tratamento metodológico adotado no teste do modelo proposto. O modelo conceitual proposto foi operacionalizado em uma fase de pesquisa qualitativa, a partir de em análise de conteúdo de narrativas socialmente construídas, e outra quantitativa, através de modelagem computacional por meio de um sistema multiagente. Para o desenvolvimento destas fases adotou-se como objeto de pesquisa o nicho de energia eólica brasileiro, o qual se entende como uma transição em andamento dado seu expressivo crescimento recente. Na fase qualitativa de pesquisa buscou-se caracterizar os processos discursivos envolvidos em transições tecnológicas sustentáveis. Observou-se que narrativas atuaram no estabelecimento de expectativas sobre nicho tecnológico, defendendo a existência de grande potencial de geração no Brasil, e a sustentabilidade da geração de energia eólica. A caracterização de narrativas resultado da fase qualitativa de pesquisa foi adotada na fase quantitativa de pesquisa como base para o desenvolvimento do processo de modelagem e simulação. O modelo computacional foi considerado como valido dada sua capacidade de representar o processo de constituição de um nicho tecnológico, e as três hipóteses de trabalho que consolidam o modelo conceitual proposto foram testadas por meio deste modelo. Os resultados de simulação observados dão suporte à aceitação das primeira e segunda hipóteses, embora indiquem pela rejeição da terceira. A principal implicação dos achados está na sugestão que a transição sustentável deve ser entendida como um processo iminentemente coletivo, não podendo ser conduzida de forma isolada por um único agente. / Socio-technological transitions are processes of change and replacement of socio-technical regimes, social structures that include technological and production systems, as well as the associated public policies, economic systems and symbolic meanings. Socio-technical transitions have been discussed as a path to sustainable development, due to the opportunity of replacement of incumbent socio-technical regimes by regimes that account for lesser social and environmental impacts. Despite the attention that sustainable transitions have recently received, it is observed in the literature a gap in the study of agency in the transition. The aim of this research is to analyze agency in the socio-technical transition to sustainability, and the main contribution is the proposition of a structured conceptual model in order to explain this agency. In developing the model, it was adopted the multi-level perspective, which studies the transition through three different levels of analysis: niche, regime and landscape. The model is consolidated in three core ideas, which constituted themselves in working hypotheses for the development of research. At first, it is proposed a first hypothesis the adoption of a conception of distributed agency, resulting from a collective action of the niche. It is also proposed as second work hypothesis that agency would be exerted through the construction by the social actors of the niche of a system of narratives, which would direct the expectations of other actors, as well as the commitment resulting from these expectations. Finally, it is proposed as the third work hypothesis that expectations and commitment would be continuously adjusted by system performance, and the main performance measure in the sociotechnical transition would be in the ability of the niche to develop learning. It was adopted in the research a multimethod design, from an epistemology of organizational complexity; another significant contribution of the research is the methodological approach adopted in testing the proposed model. The proposed conceptual model was operationalized in a qualitative research phase, using a content analysis of socially constructed narratives, and other quantitative phase, by means of computational modeling using a multi-agent system. To the development of these phases it was adopted as a research subject the Brazilian wind energy niche, which is understood as a transition in progress, given its significant recent growth. In qualitative research phase, we attempted to characterize the discursive processes involved in sustainable technological transitions. It was observed that narratives have acted in establishing expectations about technological niche, defending the existence of a large generation potential in Brazil, and the sustainability of wind power generation. The characterization of narratives resulting of the qualitative research phase was adopted in the quantitative phase as the basis for the development of modeling and simulation process. The computational model was considered valid, given its ability to represent the process of establishment of a technological niche. The three working hypotheses that consolidate the proposed conceptual model were tested using this model. The observed simulation results supported the acceptance of the first and second hypotheses, while indicating the rejection of the third one. The main implication of the findings is the suggestion that the transition to sustainability must be considered as a collective process, and cannot be conducted by a single individual agent.

L’apprentissage collectif dans un système multi-agents considère comment une communauté constituée d’agents autonomes partageant un même objectif d’apprentissage peut bénéficier, au niveau individuel et collectif, d’échanges structurés d’informations. Les agents, reliés par un réseau de communication, ont tous la faculté de percevoir des observations, appelées exemples d’apprentissage. Cette thèse s’appuie sur un protocole pré-existant, SMILE (Sound-Multi-agent-Incremental-LEarning), qui organise un échange parcimonieux d’exemples et d’hypothèses. Ce protocole garantit, dans le cas d’agents tous connectés, que les agents obtiennent une hypothèse qui tient compte de tous les exemples perçus par l’ensemble des agents. Il existe des variantes séquentielles de ce protocole qui mettent en place une propagation de l’information pour offrir les mêmes garanties dans un réseau, non pas complet mais, connexe.Cette thèse apporte deux nouveaux éclairages sur l’apprentissage artificiel collectif. Une première étude montre l’influence de la structure du réseau sur l’apprentissage avec un protocole dont les communications sont limitées au voisinage, sans propagation. Une seconde contribution présente et analyse un nouveau protocole, Waves, qui préserve les garanties de SMILE et dont les interactions en parallèle rendent l’apprentissage en réseau plus dynamique. Ce protocole est évalué en détail,dans un contexte simplifié de tour par tour, ce qui permet de le raffiner par la suite avec diverses améliorations. Il est cependant conçu pour s’adapter à un apprentissage en ligne et une acquisition non limitée, ni en temps ni en nombre, de nouveaux exemples par la communauté. / Collective learning in multi-agent systems considers how a community of autonomous agents sharing a learning purpose may benefit from exchanging information to learn efficiently as a community as well as individuals. The community forms a communication network where each agent may accesses observations, called learning examples. This thesis is based on a former protocol, SMILE (Sound-Multi-agent-Incremental-LEarning), which sets up parsimonious examples and hypotheses exchanges between agents. In a fully connected community, this protocol guarantees an agent’s hypothesis takes into account all the examples obtained by the community. Some sequential protocols add propagation to SMILE in order to extend this consistency guarantee to other connected networks. This thesis contribution to the artificial collective learning field is two fold.First, we investigate the influence of network structures on learning in networks when communication is limited to neighbourhood without further information propagation. Second, we present and analyze a new protocol, Waves, with SMILE’s guarantees and a more dynamic learning process thanks to its execution in parallel. The evaluation of this protocol in a simple turn-based setting gives the opportunity to improve it here in multiple ways. It is however meant to be used with online learning without any restriction on the acquisition rate of new examples, neither on speed nor number.

Autonomous aerial transportation has multiple potential applications including emergency cases and rescue missions where ground intervention may be difficult. In this context, the following work will address the control of multi-agent Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft (VTOL) transportation system. We develop a decentralized method. The advantage of such a solution is that it can provide better maneuverability and lifting capabilities compared to existing systems. First, we consider a cooperative group of VTOLs transporting one payload. The main idea is that each agent perceive the interaction with other agents as a disturbance while assuming a negotiated motion model and imposing certain magnitude bounds on each agent. The theoretical model will be then validated using a numerical simulation illustrating the interesting features of the presented control method. Results show that under specified disturbances, the algorithm is able to guarantee the tracking with a minimal error. We describe a toolbox that has been developed for this purpose. Then, a system of multiple VTOLs lifting payloads will be studied. The algorithm assures that the VTOLs are coordinated with minimal communication. Additionally, a novel gripper design for ferrous objects is presented that enables the transportation of ferrous objects without a cable. Finally, we discuss potential connections to human in the loop transportation systems.

Nesta dissertação, o autor aborda a dificuldade de prever-se o desempenho dos recursos humanos em um processo de desenvolvimento de software em um ambiente de Programação Extrema (XP) (BECK, 2000) e propõe uma solução com potencial para minimizar esse problema. Especificamente, o problema, a ser tratado neste trabalho, consiste em melhorar as previsões dos gerentes de projeto – no âmbito do ambiente mencionado - com relação ao desempenho dos recursos humanos na geração de valor para o negócio. Tal valor para o negócio é alcançado através da implementação, por parte dos programadores, das diversas funcionalidades de um sistema de software. Para a construção da solução proposta neste trabalho, o autor analisou um sistema XP de desenvolvimento de software (composto por ambiente, pessoas e processo), conforme o processo de modelagem proposto por Streit (2006) e apoiado na revisão da literatura relevante. Em seguida, o autor estruturou esse sistema em um modelo conceitual para, finalmente, desenvolver um modelo computacional do sistema analisado, baseado em múltiplos agentes inteligentes modelados conforme a arquitetura Beliefs-Desires-Intentions (BDI), ou Crenças-Desejos-Intenções. O modelo computacional da simulação multi-agente foi desenvolvido com o apoio da ferramenta SeSAm (KLÜGL, 2006). Testado através da experimentação estatística 2k Fatorial (LAW e KELTON, 2000), o modelo de simulação multi-agente de processos de desenvolvimento de software, para ambientes de Programação Extrema, demonstrou eficácia e aplicabilidade prática sobre o problema em questão. / In this research, the author adresses the difficulty to forecast the performance of the human resources in a software development process in an Extreme Programming (XP) (BECK, 2000) environment and proposes a solution that may be suitable to minimize this problem. Specifically, the main problem consists on how to improve the assumptions of the project managers - in the aforementioned environment - related with the human resources performance in generating value for the business. This value generation is reached through the implementation, by programmers, of the various functionalities of a software system. To build the solution proposed in this research, the author analysed a XP software development system (composed of environment, people and process) considering the modeling process proposed by Streit (2006) and also the relevant related works. This system was later structured in a conceptual model and, in sequence, in a computational model based on the Beliefs-Desires-Intentions (BDI) architecture of intelligent agents. The computational model of the multi-agent simulation was build with the support of the SeSAm (KLÜGL, 2006) tool. The tests of the multi-agent simulation of XP software develoment process model used the 2k Factorial statistical experimentation (LAW e KELTON, 2000) and their results demonstrated the effectiveness and practical applicability of the model for the research problem.

Avec le développement des objets connectés, les agents embarqués déployés dans des environnements physiques et les applications multi-agents qui les impliquent deviennent de plus en plus populaires. Ces systèmes multi-agents sont amenés à partager le même environnement physique. Cette cohabitation d'agents de systèmes différents, qui n'ont pas nécessairement été prévus pour interagir entre eux par les concepteurs, les amène cependant à se solliciter. Un agent peut alors participer à la réalisation d'objectifs incompatibles avec les siens ou ceux de ses collectifs. Pour éviter ces situations, nous proposons un modèle d'agent basé sur les identités pour l'aider à décider de sa participation ou non à des actions collectives. / Embedded agents deployed in physical environments are increasingly interoperable, and are likely to coexist with agents of others systems in a same physical space. So, an agent needs to be able to cooperate with agents from other systems and to form coalitions with unfamiliar teammates. However, before committing to cooperate with others, an agent must take into account that it may get involved in the achievement of objectives that are incompatible with its own, with the global objectives of its system, or with those derived from its previously joined coalitions. To avoid such situations, we propose an identity-based cooperation mechanism. This mechanism involves creating and sustaining the agent identity, and a commitment process to reason about identities when solicited to participate in a collective trans-MAS action.

This dissertation studies the application of several event-driven control schemes in multi-agent systems. First, a new cooperative receding horizon (CRH) controller is designed and applied to a class of maximum reward collection problems. Target rewards are time-variant with finite deadlines and the environment contains uncertainties. The new methodology adapts an event-driven approach by optimizing the control for a planning horizon and updating it for a shorter action horizon. The proposed CRH controller addresses several issues including potential instabilities and oscillations. It also improves the estimated reward-to-go which enhances the overall performance of the controller. The other major contribution is that the originally infinite-dimensional feasible control set is reduced to a finite set at each time step which improves the computational cost of the controller. Second, a new event-driven methodology is studied for trajectory planning in multi-agent systems. A rigorous optimal control solution is employed using numerical solutions which turn out to be computationally infeasible in real time applications. The problem is then parameterized using several families of parametric trajectories. The solution to the parametric optimization relies on an unbiased estimate of the objective function's gradient obtained by the "Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis" method. The premise of event-driven methods is that the events involved are observable so as to "excite" the underlying event-driven controller. However, it is not always obvious that these events actually take place under every feasible control in which case the controller may be useless. This issue of event excitation, which arises specially in multi-agent systems with a finite number of targets, is studied and addressed by introducing a novel performance measure which generates a potential field over the mission space. The effect of the new performance metric is demonstrated through simulation and analytical results.

Cette thèse propose une méthode pour coordonner flexiblement des Systèmes Multi-Agents (SMA). Plus en détails, nous étudions comment influencer des agents artificiels afin que, collectivement, ils atteignent des objectifs complexes et/ou dynamiques dans des environnements eux-aussi complexes et dynamiques (ex: un groupe de robots pour secourir les victimes lors d'un désastre, qui peut s'adapter à une grande variété de dangers, conditions climatiques, état des victimes).Dans ce but, nous avons d'abord étudié pourquoi, dans les sociétés humaines, les humains parviennent à coordonner relativement flexiblement mais pas leurs contreparties artificielles (agents des SMA). Cette opposition peut être grandement expliquée à l'aide d'un facteur clef : la culture. Les humains qui partagent un même bagage culturel se coordonnent flexiblement plus facilement, car ils ont une idée commune de ce que "travailler ensemble" veut dire. A contrario, les agents n'ont pas ce bagage et leurs échecs pour travailler ensemble s'apparente souvent à des chocs culturels.Ainsi, notre objectif consiste à répondre à la question suivante: peut-on utiliser une culture semblable à celle des humains comme un outil coordonner les SMA (et si oui, comment) ? Pour répondre à cette question, il nous faut d'abord expliquer : comment intégrer une culture semblable à celle des humains dans un SMA? Cette seconde question en soulève une troisième à étudier en premier : comment est-ce que la culture influence la manière dont la coordination se passe dans les sociétés humaines ?1- Nous montrons que de manière générale, la culture influence les décisions individuelles prises en situation d'interaction (ex: au travers d'attentes, de manière d'agir et de raisonner). Cette influence mène à l'occurrence de schémas d'interaction abstraits, récurrent et cohérents, qui, généralement, améliorent la performance collective. Ensuite, nous spécifions comment les principaux mécanismes l'influence connue de la culture (ex: importance culturelle accordée au pouvoir, aux règles) appliquent spécifiquement en situation de coordination (ex: la culture influence si les dirigeants donnent des ordres vs. des propositions à leurs subordonnés).2-Nous montrons comment répliquer les mécanismes l'influence de la culture sur la coordination dans les SMA. Tout d'abord, puisque la culture est fondée dans les décisions individuelles, nous mettons en avant un mécanisme de décision humain clef qui, à la fois, est sensible à la culture et influence la coordination. Ce mécanisme se trouve dans les valeurs, ce que les gens considèrent comme "bien" ou "important" (ex: honnêteté, discipline, autonomie). Ensuite, nous intégrons ces valeurs dans une architecture agent capable de prendre des décisions en situation de coordination. Enfin, nous illustrons que notre architecture peut en effet reproduire l'influence de la culture sur la coordination à travers de deux simulations qui répliquent des phénomènes culturels en situation de coordination connus.3-Nous étudions comment ces valeurs, inspirées des valeurs humaines, peuvent être utilisées coordonner des SMA. Tout d'abord, nous étudions pour quels problèmes les valeurs offrent un moyen opérationnel pour soutenir la coordination. A l'instar des sociétés humaines, les valeurs sont particulièrement offrent un haut niveau de flexibilité, quand les agents doivent raisonner eux-même pour établir une coordination. Puis, nous étudions les détails techniques à considérer pour utiliser en pratique des valeurs pour coordonner flexiblement des SMA (ex: quelles valeurs choisir ? Comment les représenter ?).En résumé, cette thèse met en évidence que les principaux mécanismes de l'influence de la culture sur la coordination (en particulier, grâce à l'influence de la culture sur les valeurs) peuvent être répliquées au sein des SMA. De plus, nous montrons que ces mécanismes peuvent être manipulés dans le but de coordonner des SMA. / This thesis proposes a method for supporting flexible coordination in multi-agent systems (MASs). In other words, we aim at influencing societies of artificial agents such that they can handle complex or evolving environments and collective goals (e.g. robots providing an emergency support capable of handling various hazards, climatic conditions, status of victims).Towards achieving this goal, we first investigated why in human societies, for which MASs can be seen as an ``artificial" counterpart, humans manage to coordinate relatively flexibly comparatively with artificial agents in MASs. We discovered that culture is a key factor of this relative success. Briefly, when humans share a cultural background, they manage to coordinate more flexibly because they share a common idea about what ``working together'' means. Conversely, artificial agents miss this aspect, leading in turn to coordination failures that can are similar to cultural clashes.The lack raises our goal: we want to better understand how culture can be integrated within and used for coordinating artificial societies. This goal raises the following research question: (how) can human-like culture be used as a tool for supporting coordination in artificial societies? As a preliminary step for answering this question, we need first to answer this question: (how) can the influence human-like cultures be integrated within artificial societies? In turn, this question raises a third one to be answered first: how does culture influence coordination in human societies?As a first step, we expand general theories of culture for conceptualizing its influence in the context of coordination. From a generic perspective, we explain that culture influences individual decisions that support matching expectations and coherent interaction patterns, leading in turn to (generally) better collective performance. From a more specific perspective, we specify how the core acknowledged patterns of the influence of culture (e.g. cultural importance given to power status, to rules) apply in the context of coordination (e.g. culture influences the likeliness that leaders are (made) responsible for making decisions for subordinates vs. proposing alternatives).As a second step, we study how to replicate human-like influences of culture on coordination within artificial societies. First, since culture is grounded within individual decisions, we investigate the core culturally-sensitive decision aspects that impact the most (flexible) coordination in human societies. We discover that values, what people consider as ``good'' or ``important'' (e.g. honesty, obedience, autonomy), constitute such an aspect by deeply supporting a wide range of (interaction-related) decisions. Then, for illustrating how to replicate influence of culture within artificial societies, we build an value-sensitive agent decision architecture that can make coordination-related decisions. Finally, we illustrate that our architecture can replicate the influence of culture on coordination through two simulations that replicate known coordination-related cultural phenomena.As a third step, we study how human-like values can be used for supporting coordination in artificial societies. First, we investigate the range of coordination problems for which values can offer an operational means for supporting coordination. As in human societies, values are particularly adequate for problems with complex and dynamic environments, requiring agents to make coordination-related decisions. Then, towards concretely implementing values, we study the technical details to consider when using values for supporting flexible coordination (e.g. how to concretely design values and integrating them within decision processes).

Engineering complex systems and New Product Development (NPD) are major challenges for contemporary engineering design and must be studied at three levels of: Products, Processes and Organizations (PPO). The science of complexity indicates that complex systems share a common characteristic: they are robust yet fragile. Complex and large scale systems are robust in the face of many uncertainties and variations; however, they can collapse, when facing certain conditions. This is so since complex systems embody many subtle, intricate and nonlinear interactions. If formal modelling exercises with available computational approaches are not able to assist designers to arrive at accurate predictions, then how can we immunize our large scale and complex systems against sudden catastrophic collapse? This thesis is an investigation into complex product design. We tackle the issue first by introducing a template and/or design methodology for complex product design. This template is an integrated product design scheme which embodies and combines elements of both design theory and organization theory; in particular distributed (spatial and temporal) problem solving and adaptive team formation are brought together. This design methodology harnesses emergence and innovation through the incorporation of massive amount of numerical simulations which determines the problem structure as well as the solution space characteristics. Within the context of this design methodology three design methods based on measures of complexity are presented. Complexity measures generally reflect holistic structural characteristics of systems. At the levels of PPO, correspondingly, the Immunity Index (global modal robustness) as an objective function for solutions, the real complexity of decompositions, and the cognitive complexity of a design system are introduced These three measures are helpful in immunizing the complex PPO from chaos and catastrophic failure. In the end, a conceptual decision support system (DSS) for complex NPD based on the presented design template and the complexity measures is introduced. This support system (IMMUNE) is represented by a Multi Agent Blackboard System, and has the dual characteristic of the distributed problem solving environments and yet reflecting the centralized viewpoint to process monitoring. In other words IMMUNE advocates autonomous problem solving (design) agents that is the necessary attribute of innovative design organizations and/or innovation networks; and at the same time it promotes coherence in the design system that is usually seen in centralized systems.