The general multiagent scenario with homogeneous agents is illustrated in Figure 7. There are several different agents with identical structure (sensors, effectors, domain knowledge, and decision functions), but they have different sensor input and effector output. That is to say, they are situated differently in the environment and they make their own decisions regarding which actions to take. Having different effector output is a necessary condition for MAS: if the agents all act as a unit, then they are essentially a single agent. In order to realize this difference in output, homogeneous agents must have different sensor input as well. Otherwise they will act identically. For this scenario, in which we consider non-communicating agents, assume that the agents cannot communicate directly.
Figure 7: MAS with homogeneous agents. Only the sensor input and
effector output of agents differ, as represented by the different
arrow styles. The agents' goals, actions, and/or domain knowledge are
all identical as indicated by the identical fonts.