Introduction to Agents The term “agent” comes from the greek word “agein”, which means to drive or to lead An agent is a computer system that is situated in some environment, and that is capable of autonomous action It is suitable to describe current trends in computer science: active instruments (to which work can be delegated) vs. passive tools The term “agent” in computer science generally refers to a software agent Current research directions on software agents: Multi-agent systems (MAS) Mobile agents (MA) A Model-Based Approach for Development of Multi-Agent Software Systems 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering The agents can be considered as active objects, i.e., objects with a mental state However, object-oriented methodologies are not suitable for agent modeling, especially they do not directly address the following aspects: Asynchronous message-passing mechanism Agent autonomous behavior (mental states) Agent-oriented approaches: provide guidelines for agent specification and agent development AAII methodology: based on BDI model Gaia methodology: based on role modeling. ADK approach: based on agent-oriented G-nets 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth

Agent-Oriented G-Net Model Is based on the G-net formalism, which is a type of high-level Petri net defined to support modeling of systems as a set of independent and loosely-coupled modules Provide support for incremental design and successive modification Directly support asynchronous message passing and inheritance mechanism To help ensure a correct design that meets certain system requirements, e.g., liveness, deadlock freeness and concurrency Use Petri net tools, e.g., INA (Integrated Net Analyzer) To verify structural properties To verify behavioral properties To perform model checking (CTL formulas) 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth

Agent Development Kit (ADK) Most of existing work on agent formal modeling defines what properties are to be realized by an agent system instead of how In contrast, agent-oriented G-net model serves as a high-level design for agent development There is clear mapping between the agent-oriented G-net model and the ADK (agent development kit) agent architecture ADK was implemented by using design patterns Use Sun Jini middleware for agent communication Provide a framework and a full class library to support rapid development of application-specific agents for MAS Define an agent development process for automated agent implementation 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth

A Case Study: Air-Ticket Trading 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth

Related Publications 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth Haiping Xu and Sol M. Shatz, "ADK: An Agent Development Kit Based on a Formal Model for Multi-Agent Systems," Automated Software Engineering (AUSE), October 2003, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 337-365. Haiping Xu and Sol M. Shatz, "A Framework for Model-Based Design of Agent-Oriented Software," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (IEEE TSE), January 2003, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 15-30. Haiping Xu and Sol M. Shatz, "A Framework for Modeling Agent-Oriented Software," Proceedings of the IEEE 21st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-21), April 16-19, 2001, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, pp. 57-64. Haiping Xu and Sol M. Shatz, "An Agent-Based Petri Net Model with Application to Seller/Buyer Design in Electronic Commerce," Proceedings of the IEEE 5th International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS 2001), March 26-28, 2001, Dallas, Texas, USA, pp. 11-18. Contact Information And I believe that it is also challenging to try to bring formal methods into the testing phase for concurrent and distributed software systems, for instance the multi-agent systems. Haiping Xu, Assistant Professor Computer and Information Science Department University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Phone : (508) 910-6427 Email: hxu@umassd.edu Sol M. Shatz, Professor Computer Science Department University of Illinois at Chicago Phone : (312) 996-5488 Email: shatz@cs.uic.edu 11/13/2018 UMass Dartmouth