An Ontology-based Multi-agent System for Matchmaking

In a multi-agent system (MAS), at least one agent matchmaking service is required to let any agent in the system find some agents that can help it complete some part of its job. This service is normally in the form of a typical agent called matchmaking agent. In this work, Distributed Matchmaking Agent Architecture (DMAA) is proposed. It is a group of matchmaking agents that provide agent matchmaking service and exploit domain ontology to enhance the matchmaking process. It is composed of a group of three-type matchmaking agents working together: root matchmaking agents (RMMAs), authoritative matchmaking agents (AMMAs), and local matchmaking agents (LMMAs). They represent agents' preferences and capabilities by predicate calculus sentences, and use taxonomic knowledge base to semantically match the preferences and the capabilities. The root matchmaking agent also uses the taxonomic knowledge base to perform ontological load balancing between matchmaking agents in the system so that the system workload from its matching process is reduced. This makes the system perform its task faster.