A new approach of designing Multi-Agent Systems

2004

Current agent-oriented methodologies focus mainly on multi-agent systems analysis and design, but without providing straightforward connections to the implementation of such systems on any of the existing agent platforms (e.g. FIPA-OS, Jade, or Zeus), or just forcing the use of specific agent platforms. In this paper we show how the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) can be effectively used to derive agent implementations from agent-oriented designs, independently from both the methodology used and the concrete agent platform selected. Furthermore, this transformation process can be defined in an scalable way, and partly automated thanks to the use of a platform-neutral agent model, called Malaca.

2005

The Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Technical Forum Group (AOSE TFG) has been established with the purpose of creating a path towards integration and interoperability of existing methodological approaches for the development of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). This involves the definition of a common framework for MAS specification, which includes the identification of a minimum set of concepts and methods that can be agreed in the different approaches.

2005

3 Universidad Complutense Madrid, jpavon@sip.ucm.es

2008

Recently, agent systems have proven to be a powerful new approach for designing and developing complex and distributed software systems. The agent area is one of the most dynamic and exciting areas in computer science today, because of the agents ability to impact the lives and work of all of us. Developing multi-agent systems for complex and distributed systems entails a robust methodology to assist developers to develop such systems in appropriate way. In the last ten years, many of agent oriented methodologies have been proposed. Although, these methodologies are based on strong basis they still suffer from a set of shortcomings and they still have the problems of traditional distributed systems as well as the difficulties that arise from flexibility requirements and sophisticated interactions. This thesis proposed a new agent oriented software engineering methodology called: Multi-Agent System Development (MASD) for development of multi-agent systems. The new methodology is provided by a set of guidelines, methods, models, and techniques that facilitate a systematic software development process. The thesis makes the following contributions: The main contribution of this thesis is to build a new methodology for the development of multi-agent systems. It is based upon the previous existing methodologies. It is aimed to develop a complete life-cycle methodology for designing and developing MASs. The new methodology is considered as an attempt to solve some of the problems that existing methodologies suffer from. The new methodology is established based on three fundamental aspects: concepts, models, and process. These three aspects are considered as a foundation for building a solid methodology. The concepts are all the necessary MAS concepts that should be available in order to build the models of the new methodology in a correct manner. The models include modeling techniques, modeling languages, a diagramming notation, and tools that can be used to analysis and design the agent system. The process is a set of steps or phases describe how the new methodology works in detail. The new methodology is built to bridge the gap between design models and existing agent implementation languages. It provides refined design models that can be directly implemented in an available programming language or use a dedicated agent-oriented programming language which provides constructs to implement the high-level design concepts such as Jadex, JADE, JACK, etc. The MASD methodology also uses an important concept called triggers and relies heavily on agent roles. The role concept is considered one of the most important aspects that represent agent behaviour. The trigger concept is also considered as an important aspect that represents agent reactivity. The new methodology captures the social agent aspects by utilizing well-known techniques such as use case maps, which enable developers to identify social aspects from the problem specification. MASD methodology is developed based on the essential software engineering issues such as preciseness, accessibility, expressiveness, domain applicability, modularity, refinement, model derivation, traceability, and clear definitions. The MASD methodology is provided by a plain and understandable development process through the methodology phases. It captures the holistic view of the system components, and commutative aspects, which should be recognized before designing the methodology models. This is achieved by using well-known techniques such as UCMs and UML UCDs. IV The resulting methodology was obtained by performing several steps. First, a review study "literature review" of different agent methodologies is carried out to capture their strengths and weaknesses. This review study started with the conceptual framework for MAS to discuss the common terms and concepts that are used in the thesis. The aim is to establish the characteristics of agent-oriented methodologies, and see how these characteristics are suited to develop multi-agent systems. Secondly, a requirement for a novel methodology is presented. These requirements are discussed in detail based on the three categories: concepts, models, and process. Thirdly, the new mature methodology is developed based on existing methodologies. The MASD methodology is composed of four phases: the system requirement phase, analysis phase, design phase and implementation phase. The new methodology covers the whole life cycle of agent system development, from requirement analysis, architecture design, and detailed design to implementation. Fourthly, the methodology is illustrated by a case study on an agent-based car rental system. Finally, a framework for evaluating agent-oriented methodologies is performed. Four methodologies including MASD are evaluated and compared by performing a feature analysis. This is carried out by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each participating methodology using a proposed evaluation framework called the Multi-agent System Analysis and Design Framework (MASADF). The evaluation framework addresses several major aspects of agent-oriented methodologies, such as: concepts, models and process. V ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Rainer Unland (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) for his valuable advice and guidance of this work. He has helped me in shaping the research from day one, pushed me to get through the inevitable research setbacks, and encouraged me to achieve to the best of my ability. Without his support and encouragement, this dissertation would not have happened. Special thanks and gratitude to Dr Mohammed Elammari (University of Garyounis, Libya) for his genuine support, valuable advice and sincere comments which helped me a lot to finish this study. I also want to express my thanks and gratitude to Prof. Cherif Branki (University of West Scotland, UK) for reviewing the thesis and for his valuable comments and criticism during the preparation of the manuscript as well as for revising the English language of the manuscript. The Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB), at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, provided support, including working equipments and research space. I am very grateful to the authority of the University of Duisburg-Essen. I would like to thank many people for their support, encouragement and guidance during my years as a graduate student at Duisburg-Essen University I also thank other persons such as Dr Faheem Bukhatwa (Griffith College

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2012

Model-driven engineering (MDE), implicitly based upon meta-model principles, is gaining more and more attention in software systems due to its inherent benefits. Its use normally improves the quality of the developed systems in terms of productivity, portability, inter-operability and maintenance. Therefore, its exploitation for the development of multi-agent systems (MAS) emerges in a natural way. In this paper, agent-oriented software development (AOSD) and MDE paradigms are fully integrated for the development of MAS. Meta-modeling techniques are explicitly used to speed up several phases of the process. The Prometheus methodology is used for the purpose of validating the proposal. The metaobject facility (MOF) architecture is used as a guideline for developing a MAS editor according to the language provided by Prometheus methodology. Firstly, an Ecore meta-model for Prometheus language is developed. Ecore is a powerful tool for designing model-driven architectures (MDA). Next, facilities provided by the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) are used to generate the graphical editor. It offers support to develop agent models conform to the meta-model specified. Afterwards, it is also described how an agent code generator can be developed. In this way, code is automatically generated using as input the model specified with the graphical editor. A case of study validates the method put in practice for the development of a multi-agent surveillance system.

Proceedings of the first …, 2002

2006

The object-oriented paradigm enriched with the definition of design patterns proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors in produced software; now a similar phenomenon is occurring for multi-agent systems, where this is related to the great effort that has been currently spent in methodology definitions by several researchers. In this work we describe our experiences in the identification, description, production and application of agent patterns. Upon our pattern definition, we base a reuse process that can be considered as a crosscutting phase of the entire PASSI design methodology, from analysis to development. A classification criteria and a documentation template was defined in order to help user in selecting a pattern from the repository. The pattern solution is described using an MDA multi-level approach allowing us to automatically produce both source code (for multiple agent platforms) and UML diagrams (usually almost a structural and a dynamic d...

2010

The main goal in this project is to define and implement an evolutionary and generic platform for multi agents systems (MAS) simulation by an agent-based approach. This paper describes an architecture conceived and developed in this area. Its principle consists of dividing and modelling a multi agent system to as many agents as necessary, an organisation and an environment. A designer or a programmer builds its application by making a choice of the necessary agents, by coding their processing around a processing model and by associating them around integration architecture, and then by coding non generic agents. This on agent based approach, conceived around a core to which we can add and develop thematic software layers, enhance the modularity and the genericity of developments allowing their reuse in future developments. This characteristic distinguishes our platform from other existing environments for being not only independent from any other particular multiagents model but it ...

Optimal Information Modeling Techniques

The use of intelligent agents is on the rise, fueled by the unprecedented growth in the internet and web based applications. Consequently, agent-oriented software is becoming large and complex. To support a systematic development of such software, an agent-oriented software development methodology is necessary. This chapter focuses on the modeling phase of agent-oriented software life cycle and, presents an approach for agent modeling consisting of Agent Elicitation, Intra, and Inter Agent modeling methods. Agent Elicitation deals with identifying and extracting agents from “classes” in the real world. Intra Agent Modeling involves expressing agent characteristics æ Goal, Belief, Plan and Capability æ whereas, Inter Agent modeling incorporates agent mobility and communication in a multi- agent system.

… Agents and Multi-Agent …, 2010

Holonic multiagent systems (hmas) offer a promising software engineering approach for developing complex open software systems. However the process of building Multi-Agent Systems (mas) and hmas is mostly different from the process of building more traditional software systems as it introduces new design and development challenges. This paper introduces an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems called aspecs. aspecs is based on a holonic organisational metamodel and provides a step-by-step guide from requirements to code allowing the modelling of a system at different levels of details using a set of refinement methods. This paper details the entire aspecs development process and provides a set of methodological guidelines for each process activity. A complete case study is also used to illustrate the design process and the associated notations. aspecs uses uml as a modelling language. Because of the specific needs of agents and holonic organisational design, the uml semantics and notation are used as reference points, but they have been extended by introducing new specific profiles.