Agent-oriented software engineering methodologies : analysis and future directions

The Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates in building cyber-physical systems, which are significant for Industry 4.0. Agent-based computing represents effective modeling, programming, and simulation paradigm to develop IoT systems. Agent concepts, techniques, methods, and tools are being used in evolving IoT systems. Over the last years, in particular, there has been an increasing number of agent approaches proposed along with an ever-growing interest in their various implementations. Yet a comprehensive and full-fledged agent approach for developing related projects is still lacking despite the presence of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) methodologies. One of the moves towards compensating for this issue is to compile various available methodologies, ones that are comparable to the evolution of the unified modeling language (UML) in the domain of object-oriented analysis and design. These have become de facto standards in software development. In line with this objective, the present research attempts to comprehend the relationship among seven main AOSE methodologies. More specifically, we intend to assess and compare these seven approaches by conducting a feature analysis through examining the advantages and limitations of each competing process, structural analysis, and a case study evaluation method. This effort is made to address the significant characteristics of AOSE approaches. The main objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of selected AOSE methodologies and provide a proposal of a draft unified approach that drives strengths (best) of these methodologies towards advancement in this area.publishedVersio

Metodología dirigida por modelos para las pruebas de un sistema distribuido multiagente de fabricación

Las presiones del mercado han empujado a las empresas de fabricación a reducir costes a la vez que mejoran sus productos, especializándose en las actividades sobre las que pueden añadir valor y colaborando con especialistas de las otras áreas para el resto. Estos sistemas distribuidos de fabricación conllevan nuevos retos, dado que es difícil integrar los distintos sistemas de información y organizarlos de forma coherente. Esto ha llevado a los investigadores a proponer una variedad de abstracciones, arquitecturas y especificaciones que tratan de atacar esta complejidad. Entre ellas, los sistemas de fabricación holónicos han recibido una atención especial: ven las empresas como redes de holones, entidades que a la vez están formados y forman parte de varios otros holones. Hasta ahora, los holones se han implementado para control de fabricación como agentes inteligentes autoconscientes, pero su curva de aprendizaje y las dificultades a la hora de integrarlos con sistemas tradicionales han dificultado su adopción en la industria. Por otro lado, su comportamiento emergente puede que no sea deseable si se necesita que las tareas cumplan ciertas garantías, como ocurren en las relaciones de negocio a negocio o de negocio a cliente y en las operaciones de alto nivel de gestión de planta. Esta tesis propone una visión más flexible del concepto de holón, permitiendo que se sitúe en un espectro más amplio de niveles de inteligencia, y defiende que sea mejor implementar los holones de negocio como servicios, componentes software que pueden ser reutilizados a través de tecnologías estándar desde cualquier parte de la organización. Estos servicios suelen organizarse como catálogos coherentes, conocidos como Arquitecturas Orientadas a Servicios (‘Service Oriented Architectures’ o SOA). Una iniciativa SOA exitosa puede reportar importantes beneficios, pero no es una tarea trivial. Por este motivo, se han propuesto muchas metodologías SOA en la literatura, pero ninguna de ellas cubre explícitamente la necesidad de probar los servicios. Considerando que la meta de las SOA es incrementar la reutilización del software en la organización, es una carencia importante: tener servicios de alta calidad es crucial para una SOA exitosa. Por este motivo, el objetivo principal de la presente Tesis es definir una metodología extendida que ayude a los usuarios a probar los servicios que implementan a sus holones de negocio. Tras considerar las opciones disponibles, se tomó la metodología dirigida por modelos SODM como punto de partida y se reescribió en su mayor parte con el framework Epsilon de código abierto, permitiendo a los usuarios que modelen su conocimiento parcial sobre el rendimiento esperado de los servicios. Este conocimiento parcial es aprovechado por varios nuevos algoritmos de inferencia de requisitos de rendimiento, que extraen los requisitos específicos de cada servicio. Aunque el algoritmo de inferencia de peticiones por segundo es sencillo, el algoritmo de inferencia de tiempos límite pasó por numerosas revisiones hasta obtener el nivel deseado de funcionalidad y rendimiento. Tras una primera formulación basada en programación lineal, se reemplazó con un algoritmo sencillo ad-hoc que recorría el grafo y después con un algoritmo incremental mucho más rápido y avanzado. El algoritmo incremental produce resultados equivalentes y tarda mucho menos, incluso con modelos grandes. Para sacar más partidos de los modelos, esta Tesis también propone un enfoque general para generar artefactos de prueba para múltiples tecnologías a partir de los modelos anotados por los algoritmos. Para evaluar la viabilidad de este enfoque, se implementó para dos posibles usos: reutilizar pruebas unitarias escritas en Java como pruebas de rendimiento, y generar proyectos completos de prueba de rendimiento usando el framework The Grinder para cualquier Servicio Web que esté descrito usando el estándar Web Services Description Language. La metodología completa es finalmente aplicada con éxito a un caso de estudio basado en un área de fabricación de losas cerámicas rectificadas de un grupo de empresas español. En este caso de estudio se parte de una descripción de alto nivel del negocio y se termina con la implementación de parte de uno de los holones y la generación de pruebas de rendimiento para uno de sus Servicios Web. Con su soporte para tanto diseñar como implementar pruebas de rendimiento de los servicios, se puede concluir que SODM+T ayuda a que los usuarios tengan una mayor confianza en sus implementaciones de los holones de negocio observados en sus empresas

RODE: Learning Roles to Decompose Multi-Agent Tasks

Role-based learning holds the promise of achieving scalable multi-agent learning by decomposing complex tasks using roles. However, it is largely unclear how to efficiently discover such a set of roles. To solve this problem, we propose to first decompose joint action spaces into restricted role action spaces by clustering actions according to their effects on the environment and other agents. Learning a role selector based on action effects makes role discovery much easier because it forms a bi-level learning hierarchy -- the role selector searches in a smaller role space and at a lower temporal resolution, while role policies learn in significantly reduced primitive action-observation spaces. We further integrate information about action effects into the role policies to boost learning efficiency and policy generalization. By virtue of these advances, our method (1) outperforms the current state-of-the-art MARL algorithms on 10 of the 14 scenarios that comprise the challenging StarCraft II micromanagement benchmark and (2) achieves rapid transfer to new environments with three times the number of agents. Demonstrative videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/rode-marl

LDSA: Learning Dynamic Subtask Assignment in Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has made prominent progress in recent years. For training efficiency and scalability, most of the MARL algorithms make all agents share the same policy or value network. However, in many complex multi-agent tasks, different agents are expected to possess specific abilities to handle different subtasks. In those scenarios, sharing parameters indiscriminately may lead to similar behavior across all agents, which will limit the exploration efficiency and degrade the final performance. To balance the training complexity and the diversity of agent behavior, we propose a novel framework to learn dynamic subtask assignment (LDSA) in cooperative MARL. Specifically, we first introduce a subtask encoder to construct a vector representation for each subtask according to its identity. To reasonably assign agents to different subtasks, we propose an ability-based subtask selection strategy, which can dynamically group agents with similar abilities into the same subtask. In this way, agents dealing with the same subtask share their learning of specific abilities and different subtasks correspond to different specific abilities. We further introduce two regularizers to increase the representation difference between subtasks and stabilize the training by discouraging agents from frequently changing subtasks, respectively. Empirical results show that LDSA learns reasonable and effective subtask assignment for better collaboration and significantly improves the learning performance on the challenging StarCraft II micromanagement benchmark and Google Research Football

Method Engineering as Design Science

In this paper, we motivate, devise, demonstrate, and evaluate an approach for the research-based development of information systems development methods (ISDMs). This approach, termed “method engineering as design science” (ME-DS), emerged from the identified need for scholars to develop ISDMs using proper research methods that meet the standards of both rigor and relevance. ISDMs occupy a position of central importance to information systems development and scholars have therefore invested extensive resources over the years in developing such methods. The method engineering (ME) discipline has developed different frameworks and methods to guide such development work and, for that purpose, they are well-suited. Still, there remains a need for applications and evaluations of ISDMs based on the demands for knowledge justification. Unfortunately, in many cases, scholars come up short with regard to how ISDMs are generated and empirically validated. While design science (DS) stresses knowledge justification, prominent DS approaches seem to be biased toward the development of IT artifacts, making this approach ill-suited for the development of method artifacts. We therefore propose eight principles that marry ME and DS, resulting in a process model with six activities to support research-based development of ISDMs. We demonstrate and evaluate ME-DS by assessing three existing research papers that propose ISDMs. These retrospectives show how ME-DS directs attention to certain aspects of the research process and provides support for future ISDM development

Uma nova abordagem para a implementação de um sistema multiagente para a configuração e o monitoramento da produção de pequenas séries

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Automação e Sistemas, Florianópolis, 2014A Produção de Pequenas Séries (PPS) é um tipo de manufatura caracterizado pela alta diversidade de produtos a serem produzidos associada a tamanhos de lotes reduzidos - possivelmente unitários. Neste sistema de produção as tecnologias empregadas para configuração e monitoramento do processo devem priorizar a produção sem defeitos, inclusive no primeiro item do lote, que pode ser o único. Falhas neste sistema de produção ou defeitos inseridos nos produtos facilmente inviabilizam economicamente todo o lote. Neste contexto, a linha de produção deve ser capaz de efetuar uma troca rápida de configuração para produzir um novo lote em um cenário de vários lotes de tamanho reduzido. É preciso também garantir completo monitoramento da produção do lote, sem falhas, ou quando ocorrer uma falha, ações corretivas devem ser executadas imediatamente. As pesquisas recentes demonstram que sistemas baseados em agentes é uma abordagem promissora para o cenário da PPS. Diante disso, a contribuição desta tese é a apresentação de uma nova Arquitetura de Referência para a implementação de Sistemas Multiagente na configuração e monitoramento da Produção de Pequenas Séries. A abordagem propõe uma Arquitetura de Referência, chamada MAS4SSP, baseada em uma solução unificada, sinérgica e com alto nível de abstração. Para garantir isto, a abordagem emprega como Modelo de Referência o framework JaCaMo que segue o paradigma orientado a multiagente (MAOP). A integração com a linha de produção é realizada com o emprego da tecnologia de comunicação Web Service que é utilizada pelo Sistema Multiagente (cliente) e por um sistema SCADA baseado em aplicação Web, o ScadaBR (servidor). A interface com o usuário pode ser desenvolvida como um recurso adicional na plataforma JaCaMo, ou pode ser realizada uma integração com sistemas legados de produção (como ERP, PCP, MRP) utilizando também a tecnologia de Web Service. Além da Arquitetura de Referência a tese apresenta um Modelo Genérico de Modelagem e Implementação que serve como guia para o desenvolvedor. Esta abordagem foi instanciada em um experimento simulado no contexto de uma PPS de Placas de Circuito Impresso (PCI). Por fim, os resultados e as conclusões sobre a Arquitetura de Referência e o Modelo Genérico de Modelagem e Implementação são apresentados em conjunto com sugestões de trabalhos futuros.Abstract: Small Series Production (SSP) is a type of manufacturing characterized by a high diversity of products to be produced associated with a reduced batch sizes - possibly unitary. In this production system, the technologies employed for process setup and monitoring must prioritize production without defects, including the first item of the lot, which may be the one. Faults in this production system or defects in the product easily become the whole batch economically unfeasible. In this context, the production line should be able to monitor the process and make a quick change of the configuration to produce a new batch in a scenario of several batches with small sizes. The system should also ensure the batch production without failure or when a fault occurs, the corrective actions must be executed immediately. Recent research shows that agent-based systems are a promising approach for the SSP. The contribution of this thesis is the presentation of a new Reference Architecture for the implementation of Multi-Agent Systems to setup and monitoring Small Series Production. The approach proposes a Reference Architecture, called MAS4SSP, based on a unified, synergistic and high level of abstraction solution. To ensure this, the approach employs as a Reference Model the JaCaMo framework that follows the Multi-Agent Oriented Paradigm (MAOP). The integration with the production line is realized with the use of Web Service as communication technology between the Multi-Agent System (client) and a SCADA system - ScadaBR (server). The user interface can be developed as an additional resource in JaCaMo platform or can be an integration system with legacy production systems (such as ERP, MES, MRP) also using Web Service. Beyond the Reference Architecture, this thesis presents a Generic Modeling and Implementation Model which serves as a guide for the developer and that was instantiated in a controlled experiment - a SSP line of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB). Finally, the conclusions and perspectives about the Reference Architecture and the Generic Modeling and Implementation Model are presented together with suggestions for future works

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"

The Corpus Expansion Toolkit: finding what we want on the web

This thesis presents the Corpus Expansion Toolkit (CET), a generally applicable toolkit that allows researchers to build domain-specific corpora from the web. The main purpose of the work presented in this thesis and the development of the CET is to provide a solution to discovering desired content on the web from possibly unknown locations or a poorly defined domain. Using an iterative process, the CET is able to solve the problem of discovering domain-specific online content and expand a corpus using only a very small number of example documents or characteristic phrases taken from the target domain. Using a human-in-the-loop strategy and a chain of discrete software components the CET also allows the concept of a domain to be iteratively defined using the very online resources used to expand the original corpus. The CET combines feature extraction, search, web crawling and machine learning methods to collected, store, filter and perform information extraction on collected documents. Using a small number of example ‘seed’ documents the CET is able to expand the original corpus by finding more relevant documents from the web and provide a number of tools to support their analysis. This thesis presents a case study-based methodology that introduces the various contributions and components of the CET through the discussion of five case studies covering a wide variety of domains and requirements that the CET has been applied. These case studies hope to illustrate three main use cases, listed below, where the CET is applicable: 1. Domain known – source known 2. Domain known – source unknown 3. Domain unknown – source unknown First, use cases where the sites for document collection are known and the topic of research is clearly defined. Second, instances where the topic of research is clearly defined but where to find relevant documents on the web is unknown. Third, the most extreme use case, where the domain is poorly defined or unknown to the researcher and the location of the information is also unknown. This thesis presents a solution that allows researchers to begin with very little information on a specific topic and iteratively build a clear conception of a domain and translate that to a computational system

Model Driven Development of Agents for Ambient Intelligence

En esta tesis se define un proceso dirigido por modelos para el desarrollo de sistemas de Inteligencia Ambiental (AmI) basados en agentes auto-gestionados que pueden ser ejecutados en los dispositivos más usuales de los entornos AmI, teléfonos inteligentes o sensores. Nuestra solución está centrada en una arquitectura de MAS totalmente distribuida y descentralizada, gracias a la integración de los agentes en los dispositivos heterogéneos que suelen formar parte de un sistema AmI