Abstract
An analytical model for the coordination level (CL) of intelligent machines is presented. The framework of the CL is a tree structure consisting of a dispatcher and a number of coordinators. Petri net transducers have been used as the basic module in the theory to describe individual task translating processes of the dispatcher and coordinators. Coordination structures are introduced as a formalism for the specification of integration in the CL. The task precedence relationship in the coordination process is presented by the Petri nets derived from the coordination structures. These Petri nets also provide a formal approach for using the concepts and analysis methods in Petri net theory to investigate the properties of the coordination structures.<>