Abstract
Multiagent systems can be seen as an approach to software engineering for the design and development of complex, distributed software. Generally speaking, multiagent systems provide two main abstractions for modularizing the software: the agents and the environment where agents operate. In this paper, we argue that also the social relationships among the agents should be expressed explicitly and become first-class objects both at design- and at development-time. In particular, we propose to represent social relationships as commitments that are reified as resources in the agents’ environment and can be directly manipulated by the agents via standard operations. We demonstrate that this view induces an agent programming schema that is substantially independent of the actual agent platform, provided that commitments are available as explained. The paper exemplifies the schema on two agent platforms, JADE and JaCaMo, where commitments are made available via the 2COMM library.
Highlights
Introduction and MotivationMultiagent Systems (MAS) are a preferred choice for building complex systems where the autonomy of each component is a major requirement
The 2COMM middleware is introduced as a possible practical realization of the conceptual architecture in Section 5, where the general programming schema is applied in two existing agent platforms: JADE and JaCaMo
We have presented a general schema for programming socially-responsive agents
Summary
Multiagent Systems (MAS) are a preferred choice for building complex systems where the autonomy of each component is a major requirement. We show how the modeling of interaction is a good starting point in the development of a distributed system when it comes to programming the agents To this end, we rely on social commitments [9]. We show how, by relying on reified commitments, it is possible to devise schemas for programming agents based upon handling the agents’ mutual engagements Such schemas are independent of any specific agent platform because they only depend on the standardized lifecycle of commitments. The 2COMM middleware is introduced as a possible practical realization of the conceptual architecture, where the general programming schema is applied in two existing agent platforms: JADE and JaCaMo. Section 6 exemplifies the agent programming schema in a non-trivial logistic scenario in both agent platforms used as a reference
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