Abstract
Multi-agent systems are a natural way of decomposing complex systems into more manageable and decentralized units. Nevertheless, as single agents can represent complex subsystems themselves, software engineering principles for the design and implementation of coherent parts of single agents are necessary for producing modular and reusable software artifacts. This paper picks up the formerly proposed capability concept for structuring BDI agents in functional clusters, and generalizes and extends it to support a higher degree of reusability. The resulting mechanism allows for designing and implementing BDI agents as a composition of configurable agent modules (capabilities). It is based on a black-box approach with export interfaces that is in line with object-oriented engineering principles.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Braubach, L., Pokahr, A., Lamersdorf, W.: Jadex: A BDI Agent System Combining Middleware and Reasoning. In: Unland, R., Calisti, M., Klusch, M. (eds.) Software Agent-Based Applications, Platforms and Development Kits. Birkhäuser, Basel (2005)
Braubach, L., Pokahr, A., Moldt, D., Lamersdorf, W.: Goal Representation for BDI Agent Systems. In: Bordini, R.H., Dastani, M.M., Dix, J., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A. (eds.) PROMAS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3346, pp. 44–65. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Busetta, P., Howden, N., Rönnquist, R., Hodgson, A.: Structuring BDI Agents in Functional Clusters. In: Jennings, N.R. (ed.) ATAL 1999. LNCS, vol. 1757, pp. 277–289. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Dastani, M., van Riemsdijk, B., Dignum, F., Meyer, J.-J.: A Programming Language for Cognitive Agents: Goal Directed 3APL. In: Dastani, M.M., Dix, J., El Fallah-Seghrouchni, A. (eds.) PROMAS 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3067, pp. 111–130. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Dastani, M., van Riemsdijk, B., Hulstijn, J., Dignum, F., Meyer, J.-J.: Enacting and deacting roles in agent programming. In: Odell, J.J., Giorgini, P., Müller, J.P. (eds.) AOSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3382, pp. 189–204. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Ghezzi, C., Jazayeri, M., Mandrioli, D.: Fundamentals of software engineering. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs (2003)
Heimbigner, D., Wolf, A.: Post-deployment configuration management. In: Sommerville, I. (ed.) ICSE-WS 1996 and SCM 1996. LNCS, vol. 1167, pp. 272–276. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Howden, N., Rönnquist, R., Hodgson, A., Lucas, A.: JACK Intelligent Agents - Summary of an Agent Infrastructure. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Conference on Autonomous Agents (2001)
Karageorgos, A., Thompson, S., Mehandjiev, N.: Specifying reuse concerns in agent system design using a role algebra. In: Kowalczyk, R., Müller, J.P., Tianfield, H., Unland, R. (eds.) NODe-WS 2002. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2592, pp. 121–136. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Kinny, D., Georgeff, M.: Modelling and Design of Multi-Agent Systems. In: Jennings, N.R., Wooldridge, M.J., Müller, J.P. (eds.) ECAI-WS 1996 and ATAL 1996. LNCS, vol. 1193, pp. 21–35. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)
Lehman, J.F., Laird, J.E., Rosenbloom, P.S.: A gentle introduction to Soar, an architecture for human cognition. Invitation to Cognitive Science 4 (1996)
Meyer, B.: Object-Oriented Software Construction. Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Cliffs (1997)
Nwana, H., Ndumu, D., Lee, L., Collis, J.: Zeus: a toolkit and approach for building distributed multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the third annual conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 360–361. ACM Press, New York (1999)
Pokahr, A., Braubach, L., Lamersdorf, W.: A Goal Deliberation Strategy for BDI Agent Systems. In: Eymann, T., Klügl, F., Lamersdorf, W., Klusch, M., Huhns, M.N. (eds.) MATES 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3550, pp. 82–93. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Pokahr, A., Braubach, L., Lamersdorf, W.: Jadex: A BDI Reasoning Engine. In: Bordini, R., Dastani, M., Dix, J., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A. (eds.) Multi-Agent Programming. Kluwer, Dordrecht (2005)
Rao, A., Georgeff, M.: BDI Agents: from theory to practice. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS 1995), pp. 312–319. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1995)
Szyperski, C., Gruntz, D., Murer, S.: Component Software: Beyond Object- Oriented Programming. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley (2002)
Yourdon, E., Constantine, L.: Structured Design: Fundamentals of a Discipline of Computer Program and Systems Design. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs (1979)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Braubach, L., Pokahr, A., Lamersdorf, W. (2006). Extending the Capability Concept for Flexible BDI Agent Modularization. In: Bordini, R.H., Dastani, M.M., Dix, J., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A. (eds) Programming Multi-Agent Systems. ProMAS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3862. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11678823_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11678823_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-32616-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32617-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)