Model-Based Development of Intelligent Communicating Agents for Multi-Agent Systems

An intelligent communicating agent has both the properties of intelligent agents and communicating agents, which are autonomy, reactivity, proactiveness and sociability. In this paper, we propose a modelbased approach to designing and implementing intelligent communicating agents for multi-agent systems (MAS). As background knowledge for our approach, we first briefly introduce the agent-oriented G-net model, which is based on the G-net formalism. This formal agent model serves as both a specification and a high-level design for the tool kit called ADK (Agent Development Kit) that supports developing intelligent communicating agents for multi-agent systems. Then the architectural design and detailed design of intelligent communicating agents, which closely follow the agent formal model, are described. As a potential solution for automated software development, we summarize the procedure to generate a model-based design of intelligent communicating agents. Finally, to illustrate an application built on ADK, we present an air-ticket trading example.