Visual Construction of Multi-Agent Systems According to the Agent Component Approach and the Run-Design-Time Concept

During the last years graphical tools have been developed for constructing Multi-Agent-Systems (MAS) [15, 1, 2]. We provide additional concepts for simplifying the visual construction of MAS, namely the AgentComponent approach [13] and the Run-Design-Time concept [12]. The AgentComponent approach combines agent technology and component technology and adds component features like reusability and customizability to agent technology. This approach defines the components an agent is composed of and the services an agent provides for its visual construction. The Run-Design-Time concept provides a visual handle on the running and deployed agents, i.e. running agents can be visually customized according to the AgentComponent approach. Using the Run-Design-Time concept there is no need to stop the running MAS to extend and customize its functionality or structure. In this paper we give a gentle introduction to these additional concepts and we show how MAS can be visually constructed using the AgentComponent Tool which implements both additional concepts. We will guide the reader through a simple example of building a MAS illustrated by screenshots from the AgentComponent Tool.