Designing Agent-Oriented Systems by Analysing Agent Interactions

We propose a preliminary methodology for agent-oriented software engineering based on the idea of agent interaction analysis. This approach uses interactions between undetermined agents as the primary component of analysis and design. Agents as a basis for software engineering are useful because they provide a powerful and intuitive abstraction which can increase the comprehensiblity of a complex design. The paper describes a process by which the designer can derive the interactions that can occur in a system satisfying the given requirements and use them to design the structure of an agent-based system, including the identification of the agents themselves. We suggest that this approach has the flexibility necessary to provide agent-oriented designs for open and complex applications, and has value for future maintenance and extension of these systems.

[1]  M. Wooldridge,et al.  Organisational Abstractions for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems , 2000 .

[2]  Stephen Marsh,et al.  Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept , 1994 .

[3]  Andrea Omicini,et al.  SODA: Societies and Infrastructures in the Analysis and Design of Agent-Based Systems , 2000, AOSE.

[4]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  Is it an Agent, or Just a Program?: A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agents , 1996, ATAL.

[5]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001. Developing Multiagent Systems with agentTool , 2022 .

[6]  Mihai Barbuceanu,et al.  Coordinating Agents by Role Based Social Constraints and Conversation Plans , 1997, AAAI/IAAI.

[7]  Ian Sommerville,et al.  Software engineering (5th ed.) , 1995 .

[8]  Daniel Amyot,et al.  Use case maps for the capture and validation of distributed systems requirements , 1999, Proceedings IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (Cat. No.PR00188).

[9]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Commitments and conventions: The foundation of coordination in multi-agent systems , 1993, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[10]  Elizabeth A. Kendall,et al.  Role modelling for agent system analysis, design, and implementation , 1999, Proceedings. First and Third International Symposium on Agent Systems Applications, and Mobile Agents.

[11]  Anand S. Rao,et al.  A Methodology and Modelling Technique for Systems of BDI Agents , 1996, MAAMAW.

[12]  Jörg P. Müller,et al.  Agent UML: A Formalism for Specifying Multiagent Software Systems , 2001, Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng..

[13]  M. Elammari,et al.  An Agent-Oriented Methodology: High-Level and Intermediate Models , 1999 .

[14]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  An Overview of the Multiagent Systems Engineering Methodology , 2000, AOSE.

[15]  Lei Yu,et al.  A Conceptual Framework for Agent Oriented and Role Based Workflow Modelling , 1999 .

[16]  G. Muller,et al.  Interaction-oriented programming , 1998, Proceedings Seventh IEEE International Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastucture for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE '98) (Cat. No.98TB100253).

[17]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  A methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design , 1999, AGENTS '99.

[18]  Michael Luck,et al.  Engagement and Cooperating in Motivated Agent Modelling , 1995, DAI.

[19]  Danny B. Lange,et al.  Agent design patterns: elements of agent application design , 1998, AGENTS '98.

[20]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms , 1997, ICMAS.

[21]  H. Van Dyke Parunak,et al.  Representing Agent Interaction Protocols in UML , 2000, AOSE.

[22]  Carlos Angel Iglesias,et al.  A Survey of Agent-Oriented Methodologies , 1998, ATAL.

[23]  Elizabeth A. Kendall,et al.  Agent Software Engineering with Role Modelling , 2009, AOSE.