Juan C. González-Moreno

A technique for defining agent-oriented engineering processes with tool support

The formalization of engineering processes is necessary for guaranteeing the quality and cost of the products involved. Agent-oriented engineering has already proposed development processes that still need to be further formalized to be applicable by non-researchers. This paper proposes a technique to instantiate processes for specific agent-oriented methodologies. This technique is based on three orthogonal views that are respectively related with lifecycles, disciplines and guidances. In addition, processes are modeled with a tool, which is automatically generated from a process metamodel inspired by the software & systems process engineering metamodel. Accordingly, engineers can choose the methodology-process pair best-suited for the characteristics of their project. The paper illustrates the approach based on the unified development process and the scrum process for the INGENIAS methodology and compares the results with other existing alternatives.

PEABS: A Process for developing Efficient Agent-Based Simulators

Abstract Multi-agent systems have been commonly used for implementing simulators in which several individuals or components perform actions. Although these systems usually manage large amounts of data, the process for constructing efficient multi-agent simulators is still an open issue. This paper presents a Process for developing Efficient Agent-Based Simulators, called PEABS, which combines the use of an agent-oriented modeling language with a framework adapted for obtaining efficient agent-based simulators. The proposed process covers all the development phases from the requirements elicitation until the deployment of a complete functional multi-agent system for simulation. As a case study, a simulator, which consists of an agent-based system that imitates tourist behaviors when selecting routes in the historic center of Madrid city, is constructed following the new process. The process is evaluated with this simulator and another one that simulates the evolution of student sociograms. These simulators with the same specifications were developed using an alternative process. The experimental comparison shows that the time devoted to development are at least 22% shorter with the current process. The systems constructed with this new process are more efficient in terms of execution time and memory usage than the systems developed with the other process. The final systems developed with PEABS are also more usable for the domain experts than the ones developed with the alternative process.

Modeling serious games using AOSE methodologies

Lately, serious games are a useful tool to learn how humans interact with each other and their environment. The best serious games are simulations that have the appearance of a game, but whose events and / or processes are non-game. Usually they include business domains and military operations (many games are popular entertainment on the basis of business and military operations, but with simpler rules). On the other hand, one of the purposes of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering is the creation of methodologies and tools that enable inexpensive development and maintenance of agent-based software. The relationship between serious games and Agent-Oriented Software Engineering is also clear given that software agents (perhaps intelligent) are used as virtual players or actors in many computer games and simulations, that the agent paradigm is of great interest in social behavior and interaction among agents (that can be thought of as players in a game), and also that the development process for agents is very close to the process of game development.

INGENIAS-SCRUM Development Process for Multi-Agent Development

One of the key issues in development of Multi-agent System is following the more suitable development process for a particular problem. This means that development process models must be defined. Definition leads to better process understanding, facilitates process measurement and improvement, and constitutes the basis for automating the process itself. The main goal of this paper is the definition of a process for agent-based development. This definition is based on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel(SPEM) and applied in the definition of the software engineering process of INGENIAS MAS methodology following a SCRUM approach.

Definition of Process Models for Agent-Based Development

As in other kinds of software development, the definition of process models in Multi-agent System (MAS) domain has many advantages. Some of these advantages are the better understanding which facilitates process measurement and improvement, and that the definition constitutes the basis for automating the process itself. The main goal of this paper is to provide a proper mechanism for defining agent-based development process models. For achieving this goal, an open-source editor tool and a technique for defining process models with the mentioned tool are presented. Both the editor tool and the technique provide MAS designers with a suitable mechanism for defining process models and are based on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM). Although the main goal is to define process models for agent-based development, the proposed tool and technique can define any software process model, because they are based on a general-purpose software process metamodel. The utility of the tool and the technique is also justified, finally, by qualitative comparison with others.

Using Multi-Agent Systems to Visualize Text Descriptions

Usually people make a visual representation of what they read. This is a fact inherent to their nature. Many efforts have been done in the last years to try to find a direct method to translate a text wrote on a natural language to a graphical representation. Some solutions try to represent mainly a static scene with the objects appearing in the text, also there are few approaches that try to build an animation from the action described in text. But in any case all the approaches found on literature are not reciprocal approaches; that is, if the visual result is not satisfactory another text must be wrote in order to get a better one. Software Engineering and in particular Agent Oriented Software Engineering treat this kind of problematic using model driven techniques over different intermediates models. In this paper such kind of solution is proposed to get not only a visual model of the text wrote, but also to get an intermediate model that could be used to modify the visual model without modify the text and also to propose an alternative narration if necessary. In order to validate the visual model obtained, a previous multi-agent system has been adapted to provide a representation to be run on the Alice System.

Comparing agile processes for agent oriented software engineering

Multi-agent Systems are at the moment an important new paradigm in software development. Several methodologies have been proposed for developing systems within this approach. Besides new agile process have been proposed to be used combined with the meta-models of such methodologies. This paper studies how the use of one of those Agent Oriented methodologies following an agile process such as Scrum produces improvements in the time consumed in the development that could shorten the learning time. This may have as outcome the possibility of using smaller groups in development.

A located and user personalized event's dissemination platform

Ambient Intelligence has emerged lately as the integrating concept which includes Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Communication and Intelligent User Interfaces. The real implementation of such concepts is based on the use of new technology and innovative ways of development. Agent Oriented Software Engineering techniques and concepts have been used as a way of providing support to ubiquitous computing and communication. In addition, intelligent user interfaces require systems that provide a more efficient and rich interface with the user than the traditional ones. This paper presents a platform called MAPAS, which uses Ambient Intelligence concepts and techniques to give a fully scalable solution to a particular problem. The chosen system provides a solution, using the platform, to personalize the dissemination of events, that is, the system makes available to the user a set of events of his/her interest. This kind of systems requires a high degree of users personalization. However nowadays, it is the user who must search the events of interest or subscribe to several different services or pages. The platform introduced in this paper takes profit of Agent Oriented technology to provide a system composed of various agents who may run in different devices, which communicate and provide a user personalized selection of events. Moreover, the system is aware of the surrounding environment, can be installed on smart devices, provides a rich and intuitive user interface and uses Augmented Reality techniques to give spatial location data about the events. Regarding the characteristics of the solution, it seems to be suitable for problems in the domain of Ambient Intelligence.

INGENIAS with the Unified Development Process

This chapter introduces the definition of a process for the INGENIAS methodology. It is an adaptation of the unified development process (UDP). The process adopts the organization in phases of the UDP and proposes activities and work products equivalent to the ones of UDP and suitable to develop multi-agent-systems (MAS). As INGENIAS follows a model-driven approach, these activities are largely focused on obtaining a specification of the MAS, conforming to the INGENIAS metamodel. The case study of the conference management system illustrates the application of this process to get a description of the environment and users of the system and the workflows where it will act.

Application of a Modeling Standard Language on the Definition of Agent Oriented Development Processes

The study of development processes is a key issue regarding quality of final products and reutilization of process portions or fragments. In this work, the process of a particular methodology for Agent Oriented Development is defined using a standard notation, in particular SPEM 2.0 . This case study shows the suitability of process definition as a starting point for reuse of the development process in the Agent Oriented Software Engineering field. Moreover, the results obtained will permit to design a customizable CASE tool that can fit in any development process previously defined.