A Norm-Governed Holonic Multi-agent System Metamodel
Modeling and designing systems that require a high level of coordination, control and automation is a very difficult task. The problem is the lack of design processes able to cover all the features these systems present. This paper presents an extension of the ASPECS metamodel for supporting organizational and normative principles and it allows to define models not only from an holonic agent viewpoint but also from a normative organization perspective. Moreover, our work emphasizes and makes it explicit the norms that regulate the structural, behavioral and finally adaptive aspect of an organizational system. The extended metamodel was experimented creating a Virtual Enterprise model for th…
Common and Domain-specific Metamodel Elements for Problem Description in Simulation Problems
It is well known that the multi-agent system paradigm is well suited for modelling and developing simulations of complex systems belonging to several application domains. Simulation study aims at developing simulation models useful for representing, studying and analyzing entities and their behavior in a system according to specific purposes. With our work we are trying to understand what are the right elements to be considered and included in the description of a simulation problem. In order to root our resulting metamodel in the state of the art of multi-agent simulations we started from the study of twelve papers dealing with four different application domains: Crowd Dynamics, Traffic an…
Towards a design process for modeling MAS organizations
The design of MAS organizations is a complex activity where a proper methodological approach may offer a significant advantage in enabling the conception of the best solution. Moreover, the aid provided by a supporting tool significantly contributes to make the approach technically sound and it is a fundamental ingredient of a feasible strategy to the development of large MASs. In this paper, we introduce a portion of methodological approach devoted to design MAS organizations and a preliminary version of a specific case tool, named MoT (Moise+ Tool), for supporting activities from design production to automatic code generation. MoT provides four kinds of diagrams based on a definite graphi…
Requirement analysis abstractions for AmI system design
Current trends in the AI’s evolution are going towards enriching environments with intelligence in order to support humans in their everyday life. AmI systems are plunged in the real world and humans expect to interact with them in a way that is similar to the one they have with other humans. In this kind of systems, where eliciting requirements involves several documents and stakeholders (mainly users that will be the first consumers of the system), the requirement analysis phase can be affected by incomplete, ambiguous and imprecise information. Hence, the need to find a fruitful way for knowledge management and its representation at design time. In this paper we propose a set of abstract…
A Notation for Modeling Jason-Like BDI Agents
The design and development of a large Multi Agent System (MAS) is a complex and difficult activity where a proper modeling notation may offer a significant contribution to the formulation of the best solution. The support provided by a specific CASE tool can significantly contribute to make the chosen approach technically valid and it is also a fundamental element of a feasible development strategy. The present work reports a UML profile and the related graphical notation for describing a MAS based on the Jason meta model. Moreover a specific CASE tool has been developed for supporting MASs design and automatic code generation. The proposed notation is shown in details using a classical exa…