  Driven by digitization in society and industry, automating behavior in an
autonomous way substantially alters industrial value chains in the smart
service world. As processes are enhanced with sensor and actuator technology,
they become digitally interconnected and merge into an Internet of Things (IoT)
to form cyber-physical systems (CPS). Using these automated systems,
enterprises can improve the performance and quality of their operations.
However, currently it is neither feasible nor reasonable to equip any machine
with full autonomy when networking with other machines or people. It is
necessary to specify rules for machine behavior that also determine an adequate
degree of autonomy to realize the potential benefits of the IoT. Yet, there is
a lack of methodologies and guidelines to support the design and implementation
of machines as explicit autonomous agents such that many designs only consider
autonomy implicitly. To address this research gap, we perform a comprehensive
literature review to extract 12 requirements for the design of autonomous
agents in the IoT. We introduce a set of constitutive characteristics for
agents and introduce a classification framework for interactions in multi-agent
systems. We integrate our findings by developing a conceptual modeling language
consisting of a meta model and a notation that facilitates the specification
and design of autonomous agents within the IoT as well as CPS: the Autonomy
Model and Notation. We illustrate and discuss the approach and its limitations.
