Multiagent Systems Engineering: A Methodology And Language for Designing
Agent Systems
Scott A. DeLoach
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Air Force Institute of Technology
2950 P Street
Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433-7765
sdeloach@computer.org
Abstract
Much of the current research related to intelligent agents has focused
on the capabilities and structure of individual agents. However, in order
to solve complex problems, these agents must work cooperatively with other
agents in a heterogeneous environment. This is the domain of Multiagent
Systems. Our research in Multiagent Systems Engineering (MaSE) is an attempt
to help determine how to engineer practical multiagent systems. It uses
the abstraction provided by multiagent systems for developing intelligent,
distributed software systems. A second goal of this research is to define
a methodology specifically for formal agent system synthesis. To accomplish
the first goal, MaSE uses two languages to describe agents and multiagent
systems: the Agent Modeling Language (AML) and the Agent Definition Language
(ADL). AML is a graphically based language that describes the types of
agents in a system and their interfaces to other agents. ADL is based on
first order predicate logic and is used to completely describe the internal
behavior of each individual agent. To help achieve the second goal, both
AML and ADL will be defined with a precise, formal semantics. Although
the MaSE methodology has been developed to support formal system synthesis,
it does not restrict the use of MaSE to formal development. The methodology
can also be successfully applied with traditional software implementation
techniques as well.
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