Mehdi Dastani Jorge J. Gomez-Sanz PROMAS PROgramming Multi-Agent Systems

2 Program 9 speakers in 7 sessions discussing various issues of MAS development social aspects, coordination, cooperation, decision reusability, reduce development costs, testing programming languages, tools, frameworks, libraries prototypes, experiments, case studies Session format: 15 minutes talk Discussion Joint meeting with AOSE

3 Tuesday 1 March (Afternoon session) Welcome and Round table introduction ( ) Session 1 ( ): AI and MAS - Ana García Serrano, Technical University of Madrid - Gabriel Marchalot, Thalès group, France Session 2 ( ): Development/Maintenance Costs - Jorge Gomez Sanz, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Break ( ) Session 3 ( ): Imperative and Declarative Programming Languages for Multi-Agent Systems - Joao Leite, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Session 4 ( ): Formal Methods for Multi-Agent Systems - Rafael Bordini, University of Durham, UK

4 Wednesday 2 March (Morning session) Session 5 ( ): Multi-Agent Systems and Integrated Developing Environments - Gregory O'Hare, University College Dublin - Juan Manuel Serrano, Universidad Rey Juan Cerlos - Lars Braubach, Universität Hamburg Break ( ) Session 6 ( ): Implementation of Multi-Agent Issues - Birna van Riemsdijk, Utrecht Universiteit - Alessandro Ricci, Universita' di Bologna a Cesena Session 7 ( ): Programming Pricinples for Multi- Agent Systems - Amal El Fallah-Seghrouchni, University of Paris 6 Closing: ( )

Session 1 Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems How can AI and MAS areas be integrated? What is the influence of AI concerns in a MAS architecture? What is the experience in reusing AI libraries and software into MAS? Does AI really improve MAS? Can a MAS be built without AI? What can be learned from implementation and deployment of AI systems? Did AI need or result in special AI-oriented programming languages? Can AI-oriented programming languages be used for implementing multi-agent systems? In which way?

6 Session 2 Development and Maintenance Costs Is developing systems with agents less expensive in time and effort? How would you expect agent technology to decrease development costs? By increasing re-usability? By identifying concrete problems where agents, inherently, are better solution than other alternatives, say object oriented for instance? By producing more robust systems?

7 Session 3 Imperative and Declarative Programming Languages for Multi-Agent Systems Imperative languages are chosen by most developers to produce their MAS. Can generic programming languages such as PROLOG, Oz, Haskell and Scheme be used to develop MAS systems? Is it really more helpful? What agent developments do you know which are implemented with declarative languages? Pure declarative implementations or hybrid? How can declarative languages be used together with imperative ones? How can declarative languages facilitate the MAS development? It seems that declarative languages can be applied to define the high-level behavior of an agent. Where else?

8 Session 4 Formal Methods for Multi-Agent Systems There are significant amount of research in formal methods applied to agents, e.g. model checking approaches, modal logics, situation calculus. Formal methods are associated with high costs of developments since it requires time and high skilled workers. Is easier to apply formal methods to MAS than to other paradigms? what advantages would you remark when applying formal methods to a MAS development? Can agents be a better way of introducing formal methods deeper into industry? Are agents more easily accepted by industry due formal methods?

9 Session 5 Multi-Agent Systems and Integrated Developing Environments What are possible links between MAS integrated development environments (IDEs) and programming languages? Usually IDEs use a high level representation of the MAS that are translated later into executable code. What representations are more useful? what translation mechanism are considered? In the executable code, which programming language is more appropriate?

10 Session 6 Implementation of Multi-Agent Issues Examples of MAS issues: coordination, communication, mobility, environment, security, ontology, and services. Examples of single agent issues: mental attitudes, agent roles, role dynamics, deliberation capabilities, adaptation capabilities, social capabilities, and reactive mechanisms. What are the techniques to implement these issues? Which languages provide programming constructs to implement them? How can these issues be implemented in existing programming languages such as Java or C++? How can existing MAS architectures, which are defined in terms of higher level concepts, be implemented?

11 Session 7 Programming Principles for Multi-Agent Systems MAS development require training in different conventional disciplines, like object oriented programming, distributed systems, structured programming. Techniques used from other disciplines to MAS, like abstraction, inheritance, modularity, overloading, information hiding, error handling, generic programming, compositionality, and separation of concerns. What public implementations of MAS you know? What of the mentioned techniques you would highlight in those implementations? How would you value the importance or impact of those techniques in a MAS development? Do they influence more at Agent level or at MAS level?

12 Travel Grant Make sure your organization is an AgentLink III member AgentLink needs actual expenditures (up to maximum) Original transaction receipts Send it before 1 April 2005 to AgentLink

13 Joint Session AOSE and ProMAS Is MOF a useful starting point for MAS programming languages or vice versa? Reverse engineering Which Semantics? Filling the gap between design & Implementation Code generators Special Programming Languages and Platforms Testing Multi-Agent Systems Formal Methods Differences with Object-Oriented Testing Debugging Tools

14 Joint Session AOSE and ProMAS What are the following principles in MAS? abstraction, inheritance, modularity, overloading, information hiding, error handling, generic programming, compositionality, and separation of concerns

15 Joint Session AOSE and ProMAS Environment Platform, World, Services, resources Analysis (concepts) versus implementation (constructs) Coordination Mechanism Organization structure Analysis versus implementation Evaluation Relationship between Methodologies and Programming languages based on Implementations