Agent-oriented Modelling for Complex Systems

Agent-oriented modelling and the development of agent-based software systems are topics of intense interest nowadays, with agent-based development frameworks now becoming available. Most of the existing agent frameworks are grounded in procedural and object-oriented environments and essentially o er limited extensions to those paradigms. This paper presents a model for agent-oriented software development that is fundamentally agent-based and can therefore be applied to the implementation of an agent-based framework that supports development in this paradigm. The presented model can be applied to agent-based software development at any level of abstraction, thereby supporting the development of advanced and complex agent systems that have been built up from simpler agents. The core elements of this model are decoupled from each other and both small and lightweight in terms of their semantics and number of primitive operations. The primary architectural components of agent-oriented development are identi ed, and an example architecture for an agent platform is presented.