Un marco para la definición y transformación de modelos en los sistemas multiagentes

El Desarrollo del Software Dirigido por Modelos (DSDM) es un paradigma de desarrollo en el que los modelos son el producto principal, y a partir de ellos se generan los sistemas de forma automática, total o parcialmente. Del tratamiento de los modelos, surge la necesidad de denirlos y transformarlos, que se aborda respectivamente con la denición de metamodelos y transformaciones. Uno de los principales beneciarios del DSDM es la Ingeniería del Software Orientada a Agentes (ISOA). En ésta, se construyen Sistemas Multi-agente (SMAs), que son sistemas distribuidos compuestos por agentes autónomos que interactúan dando lugar a comportamientos complejos. Si bien algunas caracter ísticas del DSDM se han incorporado plenamente en la ISOA como prácticas habituales, todavía dos factores dicultan su implantación completa. En primer lugar, la denición de metamodelos depende de la experiencia del diseñador y no existen guías que faciliten esta labor. Por otro lado, las herramientas y lenguajes existentes no permiten denir transformaciones de modelos con un esfuerzo razonable. Por ello, esta tesis propone una guía para denir metamodelos y un procedimiento para generar Transformaciones. La guía incluye un armazón para estructurar los metamodelos, recomendaciones para las decisiones principales, y una secuencia de pasos para denir los metamodelos. El armazón se estructura en tres capas que contienen respectivamente la información del lenguaje de modelado, los aspectos de presentación de los modelos y la información especíca de las herramientas. En la capa del lenguaje de modelado, se proponen ciertas representaciones de los elementos y se dan las pautas para asociar cada elemento con la representación más apropiada. Para esto se debe elegir entre una representación heterogénea, que minimiza el número de elementos de meta-modelado necesarios para representar los elementos del modelo, o una representación homogénea, con más elementos de meta-modelado pero más fácil de procesar automáticamente. También se debe elegir entre una representación redundante o no redundante de las referencias entre los elementos, dependiendo del nivel de navegabilidad que se desee, ya que dichas referencias son dirigidas. En los aspectos de presentación, se propone usar vistas que hagan referencia a diccionarios globales, facilitando el procesamiento de los modelos y evitando inconsistencias. En la tercera capa, se considera la información especíca de las herramientas, que no se había considerado en aproximaciones anteriores. Como marco de experimentación, con esta guía se ha denido el metamodelo de la herramienta INGENIAS Development Kit (IDK) con el lenguaje ECore, permitiendo incorporar las facilidades tecnológicas de la comunidad Eclipse en dicha herramienta. Además, se ha denido un metamodelo para la generación de un editor de procesos de ISOA, basado en el Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) del Object Management Group (OMG). En esta tesis, se considera la aproximación conocida como Generación de Transformaciones Basadas en Ejemplo (GTBE), donde se generan transformaciones a partir de parejas de modelos prototipo origen y destino. De esta forma, se evita que el diseñador tenga que conocer los lenguajes de transformación y tratar con detalles de bajo nivel de la especi�cación de los modelos, tales como las primitivas de meta-modelado involucradas en cada elemento del modelo. Las transformaciones generadas transforman los modelos que encajan en los modelos prototipo origen en los nuevos modelos que encajen en los modelos prototipo destino. Es habitual que exista un mecanismo de asociación de atributos para referenciar los modelos prototipo origen desde los modelos prototipo destino, indicando así la forma de transferir la información en las transformaciones generadas. En esta línea, esta tesis presenta un nuevo algoritmo y herramienta para la GTBE, que mejora a los trabajos existentes en varios aspectos. En primer lugar, se permite realizar el mecanismo de asociación de atributos desde varios elementos de cada modelo prototipo origen, mientras que las aproximaciones existentes sólo permiten esta asociación desde un elemento de cada modelo prototipo. Este avance permite combinar información de los atributos de diferentes elementos. Además, el algoritmo permite trabajar con grafos no conexos en los modelos prototipo origen y destino, característica no presente en los trabajos anteriores. Como experimentación, se han generado transformaciones con utilidad práctica en ciertos desarrollos de SMAs. En los ejemplos propuestos, se observa como ciertas transformaciones no podrían haber sido generadas por otras herramientas de GTBE. [ABSTRACT] The Model Driven Development (MDD) is a paradigm of development in which models are the main product and systems are totally or partially generated from these models. When processing models, it is necessary to de�ne and transform them, which is accomplished with the de�nition of metamodels and transformations respectively. One of the �elds that is most bene�tted from MDD is the Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE). AOSE is concerned with the development of Multi-agent Systems (MASs), which are distributed systems made of autonomous agents that interact with each other producing emergent behaviors. Although some aspects of MDD are considered in AOSE, there are still two facts that prevent AOSE from fully incorporating MDD. First, the deinition of metamodels depends on the expertise of designers, and there are not guidelines that facilitate this task. Second, existent tools and languages do not allow practitioners to de�ne model transformations with a moderate effort. Thus, this thesis proposes a guideline for defining metamodels and a mechanism for generating transformations. The guideline includes a framework for structuring metamodels, recommendations for taking the main decisions, and a sequence of activities for defining metamodels. The framework is structured in three layers that respectively contain the information of a modeling language, the aspects for presenting its models, and the tool-specific information. In the modeling language layer, several representations of elements are proposed, and the guideline indicates the manner in which each element can be associated with the most appropriate representations. In this guideline, practitioners decide between a heterogenous representation, which minimizes the number of meta-modeling elements required to represent the modeling elements, and a homogenous representation, which uses more meta-modeling elements but is easier to be automatically processed. The guideline also includes the choice between a redundant and a non-redundant representation, regarding the degree of navigability that is desired. It is worth noticing that references between elements are directed, so the e�ective processing of certain operations over relationships requires redundant inverse references. Regarding the aspects for presenting models, the guideline proposes to use views that make references to global dictionaries, facilitating the processing of models and avoiding inconsistencies. The third layer considers the tool-speci�c information, which is not considered in the existent approaches. For experimentation, the metamodel of the INGENIAS Development Kit (IDK) has been de�ned following the guideline using the ECore language, allowing the incorporation of the technological facilities of the Eclipse community in the IDK. Furthermore, a metamodel is de�ned for the generation of an editor of processes in AOSE based on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) of the Object Management Group (OMG). The second issue considered in this thesis is the di�culties for a cost-efective de�nition of model transformations. For this problem, this research considers the approach known as Model Transformation By-Example (MTBE), which generates transformations from pairs of source and target model prototypes, avoiding that designers have to learn transformation languages and deal with low-level details of the metamodels of the involved modeling languages. The generated transformations transform models that match source prototype models into the new models that �t the target prototype models. These approaches usually include a mechanism for the mapping of attributes that refer to source prototype models from elements in the target prototype models, indicating the way of transferring information in the generated transformations. In this line of research, this thesis presents a new algorithm and tool for MTBE, which overcome some limitations of the existent approaches. First, the presented approach provides a mechanism for mapping attributes from several elements of each source prototype model, while existent approaches only provide this mapping from one element of each source prototype model. This improvement allows one to combine information from the attributes of diferent elements. Moreover, the presented algorithm can process non-connected graphs in the source and target model prototypes, which is not possible in other approaches. For experimentation, the tool has generated transformations with practical utility in certain MAS developments. In the proposed examples, one can observe that certain transformations cannot be generated by other MTBE tools

Running Agent-based-models Simulations Synchronized with Reality to Control Transport Systems

Adaptable, flexible and evolvable manufacturing systems and warehouses are so complex to manage that control systems have to be divided into several aspects. One of these is internal transportation, which has to do with all tasks involved in fulfilling a set of so-called transportation orders, i.e. commands to collect and deliver material from origin to destination spots. A common approach to design the controllers for these applications begins by modeling them as multi-agent systems and continues to final deployment through a cascade of transformations. To minimize development costs of internal transportation controllers, we have proposed a model of construction that includes components that synchronize the events from reality simulation and the ones from actual reality. By using these \textit{synchronizers}, further development is required only for those parts of the initial multi-agent controller models with real counterparts. In this paper, we review the model and the architecture of the proposed internal transportation system controllers and we illustrate the whole design process through the development of a controller for an automated laboratory. Indirectly, we prove the validity of the architecture and of its key component, the synchronizer

A platform-independent domain-specific modeling language for multiagent systems

Associated with the increasing acceptance of agent-based computing as a novel software engineering paradigm, recently a lot of research addresses the development of suitable techniques to support the agent-oriented software development. The state-of-the-art in agent-based software development is to (i) design the agent systems basing on an agent-based methodology and (ii) take the resulting design artifact as a base to manually implement the agent system using existing agent-oriented programming languages or general purpose languages like Java. Apart from failures made when manually transform an abstract specification into a concrete implementation, the gap between design and implementation may also result in the divergence of design and implementation. The framework discussed in this dissertation presents a platform-independent domain-specific modeling language for MASs called Dsml4MAS that allows modeling agent systems in a platform-independent and graphical manner. Apart from the abstract design, Dsml4MAS also allows to automatically (i) check the generated design artifacts against a formal semantic specification to guarantee the well-formedness of the design and (ii) translate the abstract specification into a concrete implementation. Taking both together, Dsml4MAS ensures that for any well-formed design, an associated implementation will be generated closing the gap between design and code.Aufgrund wachsender Akzeptanz von Agentensystemen zur Behandlung komplexer Problemstellungen wird der Schwerpunkt auf dem Gebiet der agentenorientierten Softwareentwicklung vor allem auf die Erforschung von geeignetem Entwicklungswerkzeugen gesetzt. Stand der Forschung ist es dabei das Agentendesign mittels einer Agentenmethodologie zu spezifizieren und die resultierenden Artefakte als Grundlage zur manuellen Programmierung zu verwenden. Fehler, die bei dieser manuellen Überführung entstehen, machen insbesondere das abstrakte Design weniger nützlich in Hinsicht auf die Nachhaltigkeit der entwickelten Softwareapplikation. Das in dieser Dissertation diskutierte Rahmenwerk erörtert eine plattformunabhängige domänenspezifische Modellierungssprache für Multiagentensysteme namens Dsml4MAS. Dsml4MAS erlaubt es Agentensysteme auf eine plattformunabhängige und graphische Art und Weise darzustellen. Die Modellierungssprache umfasst (i) eine abstrakte Syntax, die das Vokabular der Sprache definiert, (ii) eine konkrete Syntax, die die graphische Darstellung spezifiziert sowie (iii) eine formale Semantik, die dem Vokabular eine präzise Bedeutung gibt. Dsml4MAS ist Bestandteil einer (semi-automatischen) Methodologie, die es (i) erlaubt die abstrakte Spezifikation schrittweise bis hin zur konkreten Implementierung zu konkretisieren und (ii) die Interoperabilität zu alternativen Softwareparadigmen wie z.B. Dienstorientierte Architekturen zu gewährleisten

Proceedings of The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-627/allproceedings.pdfInternational audienceMALLOW-2010 is a third edition of a series initiated in 2007 in Durham, and pursued in 2009 in Turin. The objective, as initially stated, is to "provide a venue where: the cost of participation was minimum; participants were able to attend various workshops, so fostering collaboration and cross-fertilization; there was a friendly atmosphere and plenty of time for networking, by maximizing the time participants spent together"

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Intelligent business processes composition based on mas, semantic and cloud integration (IPCASCI)

[EN]Component reuse is one of the techniques that most clearly contributes to the evolution of the software industry by providing efficient mechanisms to create quality software. Reuse increases both software reliability, due to the fact that it uses previously tested software components, and development productivity, and leads to a clear reduction in cost. Web services have become are an standard for application development on cloud computing environments and are essential in business process development. These services facilitate a software construction that is relatively fast and efficient, two aspects which can be improved by defining suitable models of reuse. This research work is intended to define a model which contains the construction requirements of new services from service composition. To this end, the composition is based on tested Web services and artificial intelligent tools at our disposal. It is believed that a multi-agent architecture based on virtual organizations is a suitable tool to facilitate the construction of cloud computing environments for business processes from other existing environments, and with help from ontological models as well as tools providing the standard BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). In the context of this proposal, we must generate a new business process from the available services in the platform, starting with the requirement specifications that the process should meet. These specifications will be composed of a semi-free description of requirements to describe the new service. The virtual organizations based on a multi-agent system will manage the tasks requiring intelligent behaviour. This system will analyse the input (textual description of the proposal) in order to deconstruct it into computable functionalities, which will be subsequently treated. Web services (or business processes) stored to be reused have been created from the perspective of SOA architectures and associated with an ontological component, which allows the multi-agent system (based on virtual organizations) to identify the services to complete the reuse process. The proposed model develops a service composition by applying a standard BPEL once the services that will compose the solution business process have been identified. This standard allows us to compose Web services in an easy way and provides the advantage of a direct mapping from Business Process Management Notation diagrams

Multi-Agent Systems

This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019

Une approche logicielle du traitement de la dyslexie : étude de modèles et applications

Neuropsychological disorders are widespread and generate real public health problems. In particular in our modern society, where written communication is ubiquitous, dyslexia can be extremely disabling. Nevertheless we can note that the diagnosis and remediation of this pathology are fastidious and lack of standardization. Unfortunately it seems inherent to the clinical characterization of dyslexia by exclusion, to the multitude of different practitioners involved in such treatment and to the lack of objectivity of some existing methods. In this respect, we decided to investigate the possibilities offered by modern computing to overcome these barriers. Indeed we have assumed that the democratization of computer systems and their computing power could make of them a perfect tool to alleviate the difficulties encountered in the treatment of dyslexia. This research has led us to study the techniques software as well as hardware, which can conduct to the development of an inexpensive and scalable system able to attend a beneficial and progressive changing of practices in this pathology field. With this project we put ourselves definitely in an innovative stream serving quality of care and aid provided to people with disabilities. Our work has been identifying different improvement areas that the use of computers enables. Then each of these areas could then be the subject of extensive research, modeling and prototype developments. We also considered the methodology for designing this kind of system as a whole. In particular our thoughts and these accomplishments have allowed us to define a software framework suitable for implementing a software platform that we called the PAMMA. This platform should theoretically have access to all the tools required for the flexible and efficient development of medical applications integrating business processes. In this way it is expected that this system allows the development of applications for caring dyslexic patients thus leading to a faster and more accurate diagnosis and a more appropriate and effective remediation. Of our innovation efforts emerge encouraging perspectives. However such initiatives can only be achieved within multidisciplinary collaborations with many functional, technical and financial means. Creating such a consortium seems to be the next required step to get a funding necessary for realizing a first functional prototype of the PAMMA, as well as its first applications. Some clinical studies may be conducted to prove undoubtedly the effectiveness of such an approach for treating dyslexia and eventually other neuropsychological disorders.Les troubles neuropsychologiques sont très répandus et posent de réels problèmes de santé publique. En particulier, dans notre société moderne où la communication écrite est omniprésente, la dyslexie peut s’avérer excessivement handicapante. On remarque néanmoins que le diagnostic et la remédiation de cette pathologie restent délicats et manquent d’uniformisation. Ceci semble malheureusement inhérent à la caractérisation clinique par exclusion de la dyslexie, à la multitude de praticiens différents impliqués dans une telle prise en charge ainsi qu’au manque d’objectivité de certaines méthodes existantes. A ce titre, nous avons décidé d’investiguer les possibilités offertes par l’informatique actuelle pour surmonter ces barrières. Effectivement, nous avons supposé que la démocratisation des systèmes informatiques et leur puissance de calcul pourraient en faire un outil de choix pour pallier les difficultés rencontrées lors de la prise en charge de la dyslexie. Cette recherche nous a ainsi mené à étudier les techniques, aussi bien logicielles que matérielles, pouvant conduire au développement d’un système bon marché et évolutif qui serait capable d’assister un changement bénéfique et progressif des pratiques qui entourent cette pathologie. Avec ce projet, nous nous plaçons définitivement dans un courant innovant au service de la qualité des soins et des aides apportées aux personnes souffrant d’un handicap. Notre travail a ainsi consisté à identifier différents axes d’amélioration que l’utilisation de l’outil informatique rend possible. Chacun de ces axes a alors pu faire l’objet de recherches exhaustives, de modélisations et de développements de prototypes. Nous avons également réfléchi à la méthodologie à mettre en œuvre pour concevoir un tel système dans sa globalité. En particulier, nos réflexions et ces différents accomplissements nous ont permis de définir un framework logiciel propice à l’implémentation d’une plate-forme logicielle que nous avons appelée la PAMMA. Cette plate-forme devrait théoriquement pouvoir disposer de tous les outils permettant le développement souple et efficace d’applications médicales intégrant des processus métiers. Il est ainsi attendu de ce système qu’il permette le développement d’applications, pour la prise en charges des patients dyslexiques, conduisant à un diagnostic plus rapide et plus précis ainsi qu’à une remédiation plus adaptée et plus efficace. De notre effort d’innovation ressortent des perspectives encourageantes. Cependant, ce type d’initiative ne peut se concrétiser qu’autour de collaborations pluridisciplinaires disposant de nombreux moyens fonctionnels, techniques et financiers. La constitution d’un tel consortium semble donc être la prochaine étape nécessaire à l’obtention des financements pour réaliser un premier prototype fonctionnel de la PAMMA, ainsi que de premières applications. Des études cliniques pourront être alors menées pour prouver indubitablement l’efficacité d’une telle approche dans le cadre de la prise en charge de la dyslexie, ainsi qu’éventuellement d’autres troubles neuropsychologiques