IMPULSE: a design framework for multi-agent systems based on model transformation

The purpose of this study is to reduce the difficulties encountered when designing multi-agent systems (MAS). Although MAS are one of the more effective approaches for dealing with the recent increase in software complexity, they are themselves difficult to develop. We believe the difficulties in determining agent responsibilities and the organizational structure as the most significant obstacles to MAS development. In this paper, we propose a design framework for MAS, which includes restriction rules in the goal-oriented requirements description and a generator that transforms the restricted requirements description into a general MAS design model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework through a case study and show how the framework can be used to construct MAS design models more precisely than conventional methods permit.