Farmer et al. The point here is the characterisation of the global behaviour of a complex system in terms of information processing. N.M. Special issue of Physica D 42, June 1990. The term self organization in this context describes the emergence of an improved system structure, e.g. with regard to stability or fault tolerance. Apart from the autonomy of the components, their locality, and emergence, there are a number of additional characteristics of such systems.
Numerous works deal with the formalization of emergence.
Dealing with interactions leads naturally to another concept in Autonomous Agents, namely that of emergence of behavior and or functionality. We present hereafter some of the most widespread references to emergence in the framework of Autonomous Agents. In this area of organizational questions, emphasis lies on the interaction between PEs, instead of on a single PE s detailed features. It is thus believed that the nature of an interaction will determine the outcome of a computation to a higher degree than will the structure of a single element.