one of the key reasons for developing Grid Computing is to enable an engineer to use a high performance ‘super-computer’ with Internet network resources, resolve complexity problem. How to integrate these disparate systems resources, together under a unified framework, can be easily shared with other systems is very important. An Agent Framework for the Grid Computing is presented. Agent-based ...

The aim of this paper is to provide a logical framework for the specification of autonomous Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). A MAS is autonomous in so far as it is capable of binding (‘nomos’) itself (‘auto’) independently of any external normative constraint specified by a designer. In particular, a MAS is autonomous if it is able to maintain its social institutions (i.e. rule-governed social practi...

The paper presents a logical framework for the integration of interactions between institutional agents, human agents and software agents. It is shown, through a case study, that the relationships between actions performed by these three kinds of agents are defined in terms of the Searle’s ”counts as” concept and their justifications are based on the roles hold by human agents or by a causal re...

Communication is one of the most important aspects of multi-agent systems. Recently, argumentation-based approaches have stood out among other communication techniques in multi-agent systems, receiving special interest from the community, given that such approaches provide an expressive form of communication allowing agents to justify their positions. However, the use of argumentation technique...

Testing software agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) needs suitable techniques to evaluate agent’s autonomous behaviours as well as distribution, social and deliberative properties, which are particular to these systems. This paper reviews testing methods and techniques with respect to the MAS properties they are able to address. For this purpose, we provide a reference framework that provides...

To ease large-scale realization of agent applications there is an urgent need for frameworks, methodologies and toolkits that support the effective development of agent systems. Moreover, since one of the main tasks for which agent systems were invented is the integration between heterogeneous software, independently developed agents should be able to interact successfully. In this paper, we pr...

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have become increasingly mature, but this maturity does not make the traditional Object Oriented (OO) approaches obsolete. On the contrary, building MAS in combination with OO constructs allows the reuse of existing components. Similarly, OO methodologies can benefit from extension towards an agent abstraction and so make use of the methods and tools for MAS. The Agent...

Agent-oriented computing is a technique for generating an agent that operates autonomously according to behavioral knowledge. Moreover, an agent can have a characteristic called “learning” skill. More efficient operation of an agent can be expected by support an agent designer who designs and develops an agent equipped with “learning” skill. The authors propose a design support mechanism of a l...

Negotiation is a central process in an agent society where autonomous agents have to cooperate in order to resolve conflicting interests and yet compete to divide limited resources. A direct dialogical exchange of information between agents usually leads to competitive forms of negotiation where the most powerful agents win. Alternatively, an intelligent mediated interaction may better achieve ...