Nets of active resources (AR-nets) are presented. This formalism has the same expressive power as Petri nets but a different syntax: the model is not a bipartite oriented graph, but an oriented graph with two types of arcs (consumption and production). Direction of the arc denotes active and passive participants of the corresponding interaction. The same token may be considered as a passive resource (produced or consumed by agents) and an active agent (producing or consuming resources) at the same time. This model may be useful for systems with dynamic structure of actions.
Several natural modifications of basic syntax are presented, their expressive power is investigated. It is shown that the basic AR-nets and AR-nets with simple firing are equivalent to Petri Nets; AR-nets with simultaneous firing and AR-nets with empty firing (“channels”) are Turing-powerful; AR-nets with reset firing are equivalent to Reset Petri Nets.