As artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to more complex problems and a wider set of applications, the ability to take advantage of the computational power of distributed and parallel hardware architectures and to match these architec tures with the inherent distributed aspects of applications (spatial, functional, or temporal) has become an important research issue. Out of these research concerns, an AI subdiscipline called distributed problem solving has emerged. Distributed problem-solving systems are broadly defined as loosely-coupled, distributed networks of semi-autonomous...

As artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to more complex problems and a wider set of applications, the ability to take advantage of the computational power of distributed and parallel hardware architectures and to match these architec tures with the inherent distributed aspects of applications (spatial, functional, or temporal) has become an important research issue. Out of these research concerns, an AI subdiscipline called distributed problem solving has emerged. Distributed problem-solving systems are broadly defined as loosely-coupled, distributed networks of semi-autonomous...