Using Jason to Develop a Team of Cowboys (a preliminary design for Agent Contest 2008)

This document describes an overview of a multi-agent system formed by a team of cowboys to compete in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2008 (the “Cows and Herders” scenario). In the two previous contests we tested and improved Jason , the interpreter for an agent programming language used to implement the MAS. Jason [2] is an agent platform based on an extension of an agent-oriented programming language called AgentSpeak(L) [5]. The language is inspired by the BDI architecture [6], hence based on notions such as goals, plans, beliefs, intentions, etc. The participation in the last contests also increases our experience both in programming agents with Jason and in using BDI concepts. In the 2006 contest, the focus was on the definition of agent’s plans [1], leading to rather reactive agents. In the 2007 contest, the focus was on (declarative) goals [3], leading to more pro-active, goal-directed agents. This year, we are motivated to continue to improve the abstraction level towards social or organisational agents, using the concepts of roles and groups. Besides the agents, we plan to also focus on their organisation. The system is therefore developed in two dimensions: agents (using declarative goals) and organisation (using groups, roles, and shared goals). Among several organisational models available, we will use the Moise model because it is well integrated with Jason [4]. Our objective in participating in this contest is thus twofold: (i) to continue to test and improve Jason and its integration with Moise; (ii) evaluate the use of organisational constructs in the development of the team.