Requirements Modeling for Multi-Agent Systems

Different approaches for building modern software systems in complex and open environments have been proposed in the last few years. Some efforts try to take advantage of the agent-oriented paradigm to model/engineer complex information systems in terms of independent agents. These agents may collaborate in a computational organization (Multi-Agent Systems, MAS) by playing some specific roles having to interact with others in order to reach a global or individual goal. In addition, due to the complex nature of this type of systems, dealing with the classical functional and structural perspectives of software systems are not enough. The organizational perspective, that describes the context where these agents need to collaborate, and the social behavior perspective, that describes the different "intelligent" manners in which these agents can collaborate, need to be identified and properly specified. Several methodologies have been proposed to drive the development of MAS (e.g., Ingenias, Gaia, Tropos) although most of them mainly focus on the design and implementation phases and do not provide adequate mechanisms for capturing, defining, and specifying software requirements. Poor requirements engineering is recognized as the root of most errors in current software development projects, and as a means for improving the quality of current practices in the development of MAS, the main objective of this work is to propose a requirements modeling process to deal with software requirements covering the functional, structural, organizational, and social behavior perspectives of MAS. The requirements modeling proposed is developed within the model-driven engineering context defining the corresponding metamodel and its graphical syntax. In addition, a MAS requirements modeling process is specified using the Object Management Group's (OMG) Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM). Finally, in order to illustrate the feasibility of our approach, we specified the software requirements of a strategic board game (the Diplomacy game).Rodríguez Viruel, ML. (2011). Requirements Modeling for Multi-Agent Systems. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/11416Archivo delegad

Logic-Based Specification Languages for Intelligent Software Agents

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGoLog, Agent-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, DyLog, Concurrent METATEM and Ehhf. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.Comment: 67 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Accepted for publication by the Journal "Theory and Practice of Logic Programming", volume 4, Maurice Bruynooghe Editor-in-Chie

A group learning management method for intelligent tutoring systems

In this paper we propose a group management specification and execution method that seeks a compromise between simple course design and complex adaptive group interaction. This is achieved through an authoring method that proposes predefined scenarios to the author. These scenarios already include complex learning interaction protocols in which student and group models use and update are automatically included. The method adopts ontologies to represent domain and student models, and object Petri nets to specify the group interaction protocols. During execution, the method is supported by a multi-agent architecture

A survey of agent-oriented methodologies

This article introduces the current agent-oriented methodologies. It discusses what approaches have been followed (mainly extending existing object oriented and knowledge engineering methodologies), the suitability of these approaches for agent modelling, and some conclusions drawn from the survey

A State-of-the-art Integrated Transportation Simulation Platform

Nowadays, universities and companies have a huge need for simulation and modelling methodologies. In the particular case of traffic and transportation, making physical modifications to the real traffic networks could be highly expensive, dependent on political decisions and could be highly disruptive to the environment. However, while studying a specific domain or problem, analysing a problem through simulation may not be trivial and may need several simulation tools, hence raising interoperability issues. To overcome these problems, we propose an agent-directed transportation simulation platform, through the cloud, by means of services. We intend to use the IEEE standard HLA (High Level Architecture) for simulators interoperability and agents for controlling and coordination. Our motivations are to allow multiresolution analysis of complex domains, to allow experts to collaborate on the analysis of a common problem and to allow co-simulation and synergy of different application domains. This paper will start by presenting some preliminary background concepts to help better understand the scope of this work. After that, the results of a literature review is shown. Finally, the general architecture of a transportation simulation platform is proposed