An Overview of Current Trends in European AOSE Research

Carole Bernon IRIT – University Paul Sabatier, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France E-mail: bernon@irit.fr, http://www.irit.fr/SMAC Massimo Cossentino ICAR-CNR, National Research Council, Viale delle Scienze, ed. 11, 90128 Palermo, Italy E-mail: cossentino@pa.icar.cnr.it, http://www.pa.icar.cnr.it/~cossentino Juan Pavon Fac. Informatica, Universidad Complutense Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain E-mail: jpavon@sip.ucm.es, http://grasia.fdi.ucm.es/jpavon Keywords: Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE), Agent oriented methodologies, Multi-Agent Systems Received: June 31, 2005 The agent oriented approach is doing great steps towards its (not yet reached) maturity; from a software engineering point of view, it is today positively used for the analysis and design of complex systems. In this paper, which is related to the activity of the AgentLink AOSE TFG (Agent Oriented Software Engineering Technical Forum Group), we provide a perspective of current research trends in this area with a specific attention for results coming from European groups. We start with a discussion of what are agents, specially from the perspective of the software engineer. We present recent trends in modelling agents and multi-agent systems, and then we review the different activities in the agent development process: from analysis and design to implementation, verification and finally testing. Povzetek: Podan je povzetek evropskega raziskovanja AOSE.

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