Modelling Multi-Agent System using Different Methodologies

The increasing use of multi-agent systems brings challenges that have not been studied yet, such as: how we should adapt requirements elicitation to cope with agent properties like autonomy, sociability and proactiveness. The agent-oriented modelling is proposed as a suitable software engineering approach for complex organizational application domains that deal with the need for new applications. These requirements are not broadly considered by current paradigms. Autonomy and sociability aspects such as the dependency of an agent on another, and how critical this condition should be, have to be analysed from the early stages of the software development process (Wooldridge & Jennings, 1997). This research work is included in the Agent-oriented Project that has been developed by the Informatics and Computer Science Department of State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and the School of Information Technology of York University (Toronto). This project aims at studying and comparing agent-oriented software development methods and techniques based on attributes and norms and by the models construction based on an exemplar. These experiments enabled the development and construction of Multi-Agent Systems applied to Health and Education areas, providing research on Systems (MAS) especially on the agent proliferation of control, communication and availability of information and knowledge in different computing environments. The construction of Multi-Agent Systems allows experiments on the agent-oriented technology in relation to development methodologies with regard to agent-oriented programming environments. It also allows us apply this technology in practical and real applications in Health and Education Domains. The Glycemic Monitor System based on the Guardian Angel for aiding the diabetes treatment (Tavares et al., 2010) and the Educ-MAS (Education Multi-Agent System) (Gago et al., 2009), (Dantas et al., 2007), a learning education environment with multi-agents helping the teaching process on a specific topic, are two examples of Multi-Agent Systems that have been developed in the project Oriented Agents. Many methodologies applying agent-oriented concepts to software development have been proposed however, the evaluation of these methodologies is not an easy task specially to