Discussion 1 - Agent Based Systems

The discussion underscored the rise of agent-based systems (ABS) as a response to the growing complexity and decentralisation in domains such as manufacturing, robotics, and autonomous transport (Leitão et al., 2016). ABS enable flexible, autonomous decision-making and real-time coordination.

Peers expanded this by emphasising system robustness through redundancy and predictive monitoring (Pulikottil et al., 2023), the importance of semantic interoperability and ethical governance in multi-agent and swarm systems (Winfield et al., 2025), and the emerging need for explainable AI to foster trust and transparency (Faisal and Tunkel, 2025). Collectively, these perspectives highlight that while ABS are powerful tools for dynamic environments, their success increasingly relies on trustworthiness, ethical safeguards, and interpretability.

References

• Faisal, B. and Tunkel, D. (2025) 'Explainable AI in Multi-Agent Systems: Advancing Transparency with Layered Prompting', ResearchGate. Available at: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11455.42400.
• Leitão, P., Colombo, A.W. and Karnouskos, S. (2016) ‘Industrial automation based on cyber-physical systems technologies: Prototype implementations and challenges’, Computers in Industry, 81, pp.11–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2015.08.004.
• Pulikottil, T., Estrada-Jimenez, L.A., Ur Rehman, H. et al. (2023) ‘Agent-based manufacturing — review and expert evaluation’, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 127, pp. 2151–2180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-11517-8.
• Winfield, A.F.T., Swana, M., Ives, J. and Hauert, S. (2025) ‘On the ethical governance of swarm robotic systems in the real world’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.