A BDI Agent Software Development Process

As computer software continues to grow increasingly complex with each passing year, researchers continue to try and develop means to simplify software development. In this thesis, we propose a BDI agent software development process as the next evolution in software development. The goal of this research is to develop a process, which can be used to enable the creation of agent-based systems. This thesis strives to present a practical software development process, which is useful to today\u27s software engineer, by building upon current agent research and proven software engineering practices. Our BDI agent software development process is a systematic process, which enables the decomposition of a system into agents. The Belief-Desire-Intention Model is a fundamental ingredient to our development process. We utilize BDI as a natural method for describing agents in our development process. Our software development process utilizes several forms of use cases, which are useful for defining the architecture of a system in our process. We have also leveraged many other existing software development tools such as CRC cards, patterns and the Unified Development Process. We have made modifications to many of these existing tools so they can be used for agent-based development. These are just some of the tools that provide valuable insight into the development of our BDI agent software development process. In addition to describing our software development process, we will also provide a case study to clarify the description of our BDI agent software development process. Basically, our BDI agent software development process strives to model both the dynamic and static structure of the agents that make up the system. Once we have modeled the stmcture, which makes up the agents in the system the stmcture can then be created in software. l

KEMNAD: A Knowledge Engineering Methodology for Negotiating Agent Development

Automated negotiation is widely applied in various domains. However, the development of such systems is a complex knowledge and software engineering task. So, a methodology there will be helpful. Unfortunately, none of existing methodologies can offer sufficient, detailed support for such system development. To remove this limitation, this paper develops a new methodology made up of: (1) a generic framework (architectural pattern) for the main task, and (2) a library of modular and reusable design pattern (templates) of subtasks. Thus, it is much easier to build a negotiating agent by assembling these standardised components rather than reinventing the wheel each time. Moreover, since these patterns are identified from a wide variety of existing negotiating agents(especially high impact ones), they can also improve the quality of the final systems developed. In addition, our methodology reveals what types of domain knowledge need to be input into the negotiating agents. This in turn provides a basis for developing techniques to acquire the domain knowledge from human users. This is important because negotiation agents act faithfully on the behalf of their human users and thus the relevant domain knowledge must be acquired from the human users. Finally, our methodology is validated with one high impact system

Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

An historical based adaptation mechanism for BDI agents

One of the limitations of the BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) model is the lack of any explicit mechanisms within the architecture to be able to learn. In particular, BDI agents do not possess the ability to adapt based on past experience. This is important in dynamic environments as they can change, causing previously successful methods for achieving goals to become inefficient or ineffective. We present a model in which learning, analogous reasoning, data pruning and learner accuracy evaluation can be utilised by a BDI agent and verify this model experimentally using Inductive and Statistical learning. Intelligent Agents are a new way of developing software applications. They are an amalgam of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Software Engineering concepts that are highly suited to domains that are inherently complex and dynamic. Agents are software entities that are autonomous, reactive, proactive, situated and social. They are autonomous in that they are able to make decisions on their own volition. They are situated in some environment and are reactive to this environment yet are also capable of proactive behaviour where they actively pursue goals. They are capable of social behaviour where communication can occur between agents. BDI (Belief Desire Intention) agents are one popular type of agent that support complex behaviour in dynamic environments. Agent adaptation can be viewed as the process of changing the way in which an agent achieves its goals. We distinguish between 'reactive' or short-term adaptation, 'long-term' or historical adaptation and 'very long term' or evolutionary adaptation. Short-term adaptation, an ability that current BDI agents already possess, involves reacting to changes in the environment and choosing alternative plans of action which may involve choosing new plans if the current plan fails. 'Long-term' or historical adaptation entails the use of past cases during the reasoning process which enables agents to avoid repeating past mistakes. 'Evolutionary adaptation' could involve the use of genetic programming or similar techniques to mutate plans to lead to altered behaviour. Our work aims to improve BDI agents by introducing a framework that allows BDI agents to alter their behaviour based on past experience, i.e. to learn

An Abstract Formal Basis for Digital Crowds

Crowdsourcing, together with its related approaches, has become very popular in recent years. All crowdsourcing processes involve the participation of a digital crowd, a large number of people that access a single Internet platform or shared service. In this paper we explore the possibility of applying formal methods, typically used for the verification of software and hardware systems, in analysing the behaviour of a digital crowd. More precisely, we provide a formal description language for specifying digital crowds. We represent digital crowds in which the agents do not directly communicate with each other. We further show how this specification can provide the basis for sophisticated formal methods, in particular formal verification.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure

Applying tropos to socio-technical system design and runtime configuration

Recent trends in Software Engineering have introduced the importance of reconsidering the traditional idea of software design as a socio-tecnical problem, where human agents are integral part of the system along with hardware and software components. Design and runtime support for Socio-Technical Systems (STSs) requires appropriate modeling techniques and non-traditional infrastructures. Agent-oriented software methodologies are natural solutions to the development of STSs, both humans and technical components are conceptualized and analyzed as part of the same system. In this paper, we illustrate a number of Tropos features that we believe fundamental to support the development and runtime reconfiguration of STSs. Particularly, we focus on two critical design issues: risk analysis and location variability. We show how they are integrated and used into a planning-based approach to support the designer in evaluating and choosing the best design alternative. Finally, we present a generic framework to develop self-reconfigurable STSs

Pitfalls of Agent-Oriented Development

While the theoretical and experimental foundations of agent-based systems are becoming increasingly well understood, comparatively little effort has been devoted to understanding the pragmatics of (multi-) agent systems development - the everyday reality of carrying out an agent-based development project. As a result, agent system developers are needlessly repeating the same mistakes, with the result that, at best, resources are wasted - at worst, projects fail. This paper identifies the main pitfalls that await the agent system developer, and where possible, makes tentative recommendations for how these pitfalls can be avoided or rectified

Alert-BDI: BDI Model with Adaptive Alertness through Situational Awareness

In this paper, we address the problems faced by a group of agents that possess situational awareness, but lack a security mechanism, by the introduction of a adaptive risk management system. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture lacks a framework that would facilitate an adaptive risk management system that uses the situational awareness of the agents. We extend the BDI architecture with the concept of adaptive alertness. Agents can modify their level of alertness by monitoring the risks faced by them and by their peers. Alert-BDI enables the agents to detect and assess the risks faced by them in an efficient manner, thereby increasing operational efficiency and resistance against attacks.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ICACCI 2013, Mysore, Indi