Christine Maurel

Model Driven Engineering for Designing Adaptive Multi-Agents Systems

A challenge for our days is to provide new efficient CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools enabling MAS designers towards Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approaches. The goal of MDE is to improve the development process and the quality of the software produced. Our work focuses on two different aspects of MAS. The functional one, which is application dependent and close to the decision process of agents, and the operational one related to elementary capabilities of agents. For each point of view, we have defined specific meta-models. Our goal in this paper is to provide a mapping from the functional meta-model to the operational that constitutes a specific platform model. As we are interested in adaptive systems, we have to deal with adaptation both at the agent and the system level. We address this problem by respectively using the JavAct flexible architecture and the Adaptive MAS principles.

A Goal-Oriented Approach for Modelling Self-organising MAS

Autonomous software agents provide a promising solution to the needs of decentralised networked systems, able to adapt their behaviour in a complex and dynamically changing environment. Current agent-oriented software engineering methodologies tend to focus on different levels to realise such a self-adapting behaviour, namely the agent individual level and the global system level. The first requires to design a goal-directed agent behaviour, the second to design agents able to optimize their coordination with other peer agents in the organization, giving rise to system-level adaptation. In this paper we propose to extend a goal-oriented engineering methodology to deal with the modelling of organisations that are able to self-organise in order to reach their goals in a changing environment. To deliver on this aim, we combine Tropos4AS , an extension of TROPOS for adaptive systems, with concepts, guidelines and modelling steps from the ADELFE methodology, which provides a bottom-up approach for engineering collaborative multi-agent societies with an emergent behaviour. The resulting MAS has self-adaptation properties, having agents that are able to change their behaviour according to changes in the environment, and having organisations that adapt themselves to changing needs. The approach is illustrated by modelling a collaborative multi-agent system for conference management.

ADELFE 2.0

ADELFE is a French acronym that means “Toolkit for Designing Software with Emergent Functionalities” (“Atelier de DEveloppement de Logiciels a Fonctionnalite Emergente” in French). ADELFE methodology is dedicated to applications characterized by openness and the need of the system adaptation to an environment. Its main goal is to help and guide any designer during the development of an Adaptive Multi-agent System (AMAS). An AMAS is characterized by the following points: it is plunged into an environment and composed of interdependent agents, each agent carries out a partial function and the agents, organization during runtime makes the system realize an emergent function. Actually, an agent is locally cooperative, i.e. it is able to recognize cooperation failures called Non-cooperative Situations (NCS, which could be related to exceptions in classical programs) and treat them.

An API for high-level software engineering of distributed and mobile applications

This paper proposes actors as a model for mobile agents. Because of their intrinsic autonomy (thread integration) and behavior changing ability, added to asynchronous communication, actors are naturally mobile entities, and moving actors has no effect on their initial semantics. Then, we propose a standard API on top of Java and RMI, called JavAct, for distributed and mobile applications programming. JavAct is actor-based and allows nearly immediate and strong agent mobility. Mobile actors are localized by means of a forwarding chain technique. Network-level references of actors contribute to location independence of computations. Additionally, in this paper, we give an overview of some related programming systems.

A Stepwise Refinement Based Development of Self-Organizing Multi-Agent Systems: Application to the Foraging Ants

This paper proposes a formal modeling for Self-Organizing Multi-Agent Systems (SOMAS) based on stepwise refinements, with the Event-B language and the Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA). This modeling allows to develop this kind of systems in a more structured manner. In addition, it enables to reason, in a rigorous way, about the correctness of the derived models both at the individual level and the global level. Our work is illustrated by the foraging ants case study.

A stepwise refinement-based development of self-organising multi-agent systems: application to the foraging ants

This paper proposes a formal modelling for self-organising multi-agent systems SOMAS based on stepwise refinements, with the Event-B language and the temporal logic of actions TLA. This modelling allows to develop this kind of systems in a more structured manner. In addition, it enables to reason, in a rigorous way, about the correctness of the derived models both at the local level and the global level. Our work is illustrated by the foraging ants case study.

Vers une modélisation formelle basée sur le raffinement des systèmes multi-agents auto-organisateurs

The development of self-organizing MAS still lacks rigorous verification methods to ensure the convergence and resilience of the designed system. Such insurances can be obtained through the application of formal methods. However, the integration of these techniques is still modest due to the complexity of the dynamics of self-organizing MAS which makes the overall function emerging. In this article, we explore the potential of formal languages, in particular Event-B and the TLA logic to prove the convergence and the resilience of the system. We assume that these properties can first, be observed at the global level by simulation. Then, Formal techniques allow us to prove them. Our work is illustrated by the foraging ant’s case study. MOTS-CLÉS : SMA auto-organisateurs, fourmis fourrageuses, vérification formelle, B-événementiel, TLA.