Roughly described, the interpretation phase of a system using an Adaptive Agent-Oriented Software Architecture allows queried agents to respond to queries before they have all their own responses from their own downchain agents. Alternatively or additionally, the originating agent can include a “depth-or-search”...http://www.google.com/patents/US6990670?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US6990670 - Interpretation phase for adaptive agent oriented software architecture