Prioritisation mechanisms to support incremental development of agent systems

It is often necessary to partition a project into different priority levels and to develop incrementally. This paper presents a mechanism whereby a developer can prioritise scenarios on a five point scale, leading to automated, coherent partitioning of all required design entities, according to the three IEEE defined priority levels of essential, conditional and optional, which are used in many companies. This allows for automated support to guide the developer as to what design artefacts need to be developed at each phase. The developer can indicate the relative sizes desired for the three partitions and the algorithm described will attempt to get as close to this as possible. It is also possible to move items manually to achieve better sized partitions, as long as priority orderings are not violated. The approach is fast and easy to apply at various times during development, as needed

Automated testing for intelligent agent systems

This paper describes an approach to unit testing of plan based agent systems, with a focus on automated generation and execution of test cases. Design artefacts, supplemented with some additional data, provide the basis for specification of a comprehensive suite of test cases. Correctness of execution is evaluated against a design model, and a comprehensive report of errors and warnings is provided to the user. Given that it is impossible to design test suites which execute all possible traces of an agent program, it is extremely important to thoroughly test all units in as wide a variety of situations as possible to ensure acceptable behaviour. We provide details of the information required in design models or related data to enable the automated generation and execution of test cases. We also briefly describe the implemented tool which realises this approach

Prometheus design tool

The Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) supports the structured design of intelligent agent systems. It supports the Prometheus methodology, but can also be used more generally. This paper outlines the tool and some of its many features

AUML protocols and code generation in the Prometheus design tool

Prometheus is an agent-oriented software engineering methodology. The Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) is a software tool that supports a designer who is using the Prometheus methodology. PDT has recently been extended with two significant new features: support for Agent UML interaction protocols, and code generation

Automated unit testing intelligent agents in PDT

The Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) is an agent development tool that supports the Prometheus design methodology and includes features like automated code generation. We enhance this tool by adding a feature that allows the automated unit testing of agents that are built from within PDT

Eclipse-based prometheus design tool

The Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) is a graphical tool that is used to design a Multi-Agent System following the Prometheus Methodology. This paper describes the latest version of PDT which is now integrated into the Eclipse platform, enabling the users to accomplish the full development life-cycle of an agent-oriented application in one IDE and also inherit the rich set of product development features that Eclipse provides. This version of PDT also aims to support simpler integration with tools from other AOSE methodologies where appropriate

Designing Multi-Agent System Model for University Teaching Activities by Using UML

The area which covers the meaning of intelligent agents and their contribution is a subject of constant changes. Researchers are in a constant race to create intelligent agents that will contribute the most benefits in their life and will represent an extenuating circumstance regarding different complexity level problems, aiming to satisfy people’s needs. Some of them show agent models that\ud are going to be the starting point of future projects, and some give the whole picture of fully functioning agents. This paper gives a review of a systematic approach for\ud designing multi agent system model for university teaching activities using UML approach

Defining syntax and providing tool support for agent uml using a textual notation

Abstract: An important role in software engineering is played by design notations. The Agent UML (AUML) notation for sequence diagrams has been widely used to capture the design of interactions between agents. However, AUML is not precisely defined, and there is very little in the way of tool support available. We argue that using a textual notation allows the notation to be precisely defined, and facilitates the development of tool support. We present a textual notation that we have developed, and describe a number of tools that support this notation. One of these tools is a ‘renderer ’ which takes a textual AUML protocol and generates the standard graphical view. The layout of graphical elements in the generated graphical view is done automatically, using a layout algorithm which we present

Flexible conversation management using a BDI agent approach

We describe a BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) goal-oriented architecture for a conversational virtual companion embodied as a child's Toy, designed to be both entertaining and capable of carrying out col- laborative tasks. We argue that the goal-oriented approach supports both structured conversational activities (e.g., story-telling, collaborative games) as well as more \free- owing" engaging dialogue with variation and some unpredictability. BDI plans encode the knowledge required for the structured engagements, with the use of multiple plans for conversa- tional goals providing variation in the interactions