Analysis and design of multiagent systems using MAS-CommonKADS

This article proposes an agent-oriented methodology called MAS-CommonKADS and develops a case study. This methodology extends the knowledge engineering methodology CommonKADSwith techniquesfrom objectoriented and protocol engineering methodologies. The methodology consists of the development of seven models: Agent Model, that describes the characteristics of each agent; Task Model, that describes the tasks that the agents carry out; Expertise Model, that describes the knowledge needed by the agents to achieve their goals; Organisation Model, that describes the structural relationships between agents (software agents and/or human agents); Coordination Model, that describes the dynamic relationships between software agents; Communication Model, that describes the dynamic relationships between human agents and their respective personal assistant software agents; and Design Model, that refines the previous models and determines the most suitable agent architecture for each agent, and the requirements of the agent network

Cooperative collision avoidance control and coordination for multiagent Lagrangian systems with disturbances

Multi-agent systems like a network of autonomous robots, have tremendous potential in many military and civilian applications. But, even viewed as a pure academic problem, designing controllers for such complex systems is a matter of much interest. Controller design for multi-agent system might focus on achieving several objectives, such as formation control, coverage control, consensus, target capture, pursuit evasion etc., while all at the same time aiming to be optimal in some sense, or following certain constraints imposed by the environment or communication limitations. Whatever is the objective, we always want to have a safety guarantee for the agents; the agents should avoid collisions with themselves and any static obstacles, while performing an objective. This thesis studies one such controller, which guarantees collision avoidance among the agents, in presence of bounded disturbances, while the agents carry out a coordination objective. The agents are assumed to follow a Lagrangian dynamics. The collision avoidance controller takes up the second part of the thesis. In the first part of this thesis, a particular Lagrangian system, the Raven II surgical robot, is studied in with the aim of highlighting the process of modelling and identifying such system. This is done for two reasons. One because Lagrangian dynamics is commonly used to model the agents in a multi-agent system. And second reason that motivates the modelling Raven II in part I, is to aid in future research direction pertaining to the control of Raven II

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

Coordination approaches and systems - part I : a strategic perspective

This is the first part of a two-part paper presenting a fundamental review and summary of research of design coordination and cooperation technologies. The theme of this review is aimed at the research conducted within the decision management aspect of design coordination. The focus is therefore on the strategies involved in making decisions and how these strategies are used to satisfy design requirements. The paper reviews research within collaborative and coordinated design, project and workflow management, and, task and organization models. The research reviewed has attempted to identify fundamental coordination mechanisms from different domains, however it is concluded that domain independent mechanisms need to be augmented with domain specific mechanisms to facilitate coordination. Part II is a review of design coordination from an operational perspective

Organisational Abstractions for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems

The architecture of a multi-agent system can naturally be viewed as a computational organisation. For this reason, we believe organisational abstractions should play a central role in the analysis and design of such systems. To this end, the concepts of agent roles and role models are increasingly being used to specify and design multi-agent systems. However, this is not the full picture. In this paper we introduce three additional organisational concepts - organisational rules, organisational structures, and organisational patterns - that we believe are necessary for the complete specification of computational organisations. We view the introduction of these concepts as a step towards a comprehensive methodology for agent-oriented systems

Production/maintenance cooperative scheduling using multi-agents and fuzzy logic

Within companies, production is directly concerned with the manufacturing schedule, but other services like sales, maintenance, purchasing or workforce management should also have an influence on this schedule. These services often have together a hierarchical relationship, i.e. the leading function (most of the time sales or production) generates constraints defining the framework within which the other functions have to satisfy their own objectives. We show how the multi-agent paradigm, often used in scheduling for its ability to distribute decision-making, can also provide a framework for making several functions cooperate in the schedule performance. Production and maintenance have been chosen as an example: having common resources (the machines), their activities are actually often conflicting. We show how to use a fuzzy logic in order to model the temporal degrees of freedom of the two functions, and show that this approach may allow one to obtain a schedule that provides a better compromise between the satisfaction of the respective objectives of the two functions