This paper presents the Agent Factory Development Methodology, an Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodology that employs a synthesis of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Agent UML to support the development of multi-agent systems. We illustrate the use of this methodology, through a simple case study and briefly compare it to some other well-known AOSE methodologies.

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is an emerging software engineering paradigm that advocates the application of best practices in the development of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) through the use of agents and organizations of agents. This paper outlines the MADE system, which provides an interactive platform for people who are not well-versed in AOSE to contribute to the rapid prototyping...

Many approaches and tools assist the various tasks required to develop a multi-agent system (MAS), yet there still remains a gap between the generation of MAS models and program code. The resulting popularity of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) thus demands a methodology that facilitates the development of robust, scalable MAS implementations that recognise real-world semantics. We de...

We propose a preliminary methodology for agent-oriented software engineering based on the idea of agent interaction analysis. This approach uses interactions between undetermined agents as the primary component of analysis and design. Agents as a basis for software engineering are useful because they provide a powerful and intuitive abstraction which can increase the comprehensiblity of a compl...

We report on experience with using RDF to provide a rich content language for use with FIPA agent toolkits, and on RDFS as a metadata language. We emphasise their utility for programmers working in agent applications and their value in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. Agent applications covered include Intelligent Information Agents, and agents forming Virtual Organisations. We believe our ...

A great number of methodologies has been already introduced in the agent-oriented software engineering field. Recently many of the authors of these methodologies also worked on their fragmentation thus obtaining portions (often called method or process fragments) that may be composed into new methodologies. The great advancement in this field, however does not correspond to equivalent results i...

The state of the art in multi-agent research and engineering is insufficiently reflected in the state of the practice in complex distributed systems because the community has yet to demonstrate the significant benefits of using agent-oriented approaches to solve complex problems. The practitioner’s view that multi-agent approaches are not technically superior to traditional approaches is unders...

We seek to address the challenge of engineering socially intelligent personal agents that are privacy-aware. We propose Arnor, a method, including a metamodel based on social constructs. Arnor incorporates social norms and goes beyond existing agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) methods by systematically capturing how a personal agent’s actions influence the social experience it delivers...

The architecture of a multi-agent system can naturally be viewed as an organised society of individuals (i.e., as a computational organisation). For this reason, we believe organisational abstractions should play a central role in the analysis and design of such systems. To this end, the concepts of agent roles and role models are increasingly being used to specify and design multi-agent system...

The agent oriented approach is doing great steps towards its (not yet reached) maturity; from a software engineering point of view, it is today positively used for the analysis and design of complex systems. In this paper, which is related to the activity of the AgentLink AOSE TFG (Agent Oriented Software Engineering Technical Forum Group), we provide a perspective of current research trends in...