Stéphane Galland

ASPECS: an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems

Holonic multiagent systems (HMAS) offer a promising software engineering approach for developing complex open software systems. However the process of building Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and HMAS is mostly different from the process of building more traditional software systems as it introduces new design and development challenges. This paper introduces an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems called ASPECS. ASPECS is based on a holonic organisational metamodel and provides a step-by-step guide from requirements to code allowing the modelling of a system at different levels of details using a set of refinement methods. This paper details the entire ASPECS development process and provides a set of methodological guidelines for each process activity. A complete case study is also used to illustrate the design process and the associated notations. ASPECS uses UML as a modelling language. Because of the specific needs of agents and holonic organisational design, the UML semantics and notation are used as reference points, but they have been extended by introducing new specific profiles.

An Organisational Platform for Holonic and Multiagent Systems

janus is a new multiagent platform that was specifically designed to deal with the implementation and deployment of holonic and multiagent systems. It is based on an organisational approach and its key focus is that it supports the implementation of the concepts of role and organisation as first-class entities. This consideration has a significant impact on agent implementation and allows an agent to easily and dynamically change its behaviour. The platform also natively manages the concept of holon to facilitate the deployment of holonic multiagent systems and thus contributes to fill the gap between conception and implementation phases in this domain. This article draws a complete description of janus and its main characteristics. A small example of a market-like community is also provided with the associated code review to illustrate the impact of a full organisational approach in terms of code modularity and reusability.

Holonic multilevel simulation of complex systems : Application to real-time pedestrians simulation in virtual urban environment

Abstract Simulation, which creates abstractions of the system is an appropriate approach for studying complex systems that are inaccessible through direct observation and measurement. The problem with simulation of great numbers of interacting entities is that it is difficult to create a reliable and tractable abstraction of the real system. Indeed, simulating large numbers of entities requires great computing resources. A solution to avoid this problem is to use macroscopic models. However, this type of model may be unavailable or not reliable for the problem at hand and it does not allow the observation of individual behaviours. In this paper, a multilevel simulation model is proposed to allow the use of both microscopic and macroscopic techniques. This model is based upon Holonic Multi-Agent Systems which offer a promising approach for developing applications in complex domains characterised by a hierarchical structure. The proposed approach provides a generic scheduling model for multilevel simulations: dynamically adapting the level of simulated behaviours while being as faithful as possible to the simulated model. It does not only manage the level of entities’ behaviour but also of behaviours classically assigned to the environmental part of a simulation. A set of physics-based indicators is also introduced to dynamically determine the most suitable level for each entity and to maintain the best trade-off between simulation accuracy and constraints (dependent on the model or the experimental context).

An analysis and design concept for self-organization in holonic multi-agent systems

Holonic Multi-Agent Systems (HMAS) are a convenient way to engineer complex and open systems. HMAS are based upon self-similar entities, called holons, which define an organizational structure called holarchy. An open issue of HMAS is to give holons means of self-organization to satisfy their goals. Our works focus on modeling and engineering of complex systems using a holonic organizational approach. This paper introduces the concept of capacity as the description of agents know-how. This concept allows the representation and reasoning about agents know-hows. Even more, it encourages a reusable modeling and provides agents with means to self-organize.

An introduction to a methodological approach for the simulation of distributed industrial systems

We are located in the context of the industrial system simulation, which is complex and distributed in operational, informational and decisional terms. In this article, we present the problems of the simulation of such systems. We propose a methodological approach based on the systemic and on the multi-agent concepts. It authorizes the data-processing and modeling distributions.

An Ontology-Based Metamodel for MultiAgent-Based Simulations

Multiagent-based simulations enable us to validate dierent use-case scenarios in a lot of application domains. The idea is to develop a realistic virtual environment to test particular domain-specic procedures. This paper presents our general framework for interactive multiagent-based simulations in virtual environments. The major contribution of this paper is the integration of the notion of ontology as a core element to the design process of a behavioral simulation. The proposed metamodel describes the concepts of a multiagent simulation using situated agents moving in a semantically enriched 3D environment. The agents perceive the geometric and semantic data in the surrounding environment. They are also able to act in this environment by using high-level actions, which are described by the ontology of the environment. The concepts relating to the environment, the agent, and the entire simulation models are presented. Additionally, guidelines are given to exploit the simulation results to characterize the agents. Finally, a simple application of the metamodel is presented, based upon the use of Industry Foundation Classes.

Virtual intelligent vehicle urban simulator: Application to vehicle platoon evaluation

Abstract Testing algorithms with real cars is a mandatory step in developing new intelligent abilities for future transportation systems. However, this step is sometimes hard to accomplish especially due to several problems. It is also difficult to reproduce the same scenario several times. Besides, some critical and/or real world forbidden scenarios cannot be tested. Thus, the comparison of several algorithms using the same experimental conditions is hard to realize. Considering that, it seems important to use simulation tools to perform scenarios with realistic conditions. The main problem with these tools is their distance from real conditions, since they deeply simplify the reality. This paper presents the architecture of the simulation/prototyping tool named Virtual Intelligent Vehicle Urban Simulator ( vivus ). The goal of vivus is thus to overcome the general drawbacks of classical solutions by providing the possibility of designing a vehicle virtual prototype with simulated embedded sensors and physical properties. Experiments made on linear platoon algorithms are exposed in this paper in order to illustrate the similarities between simulated results and those obtained with real cars.

Submicroscopic and Physics Simulation of Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicles in Virtual Reality

Simulation, which creates abstractions of the system is an appropriate approach for studying complex systems that are inaccessible through direct observation and measurement. Many simulators aimed at studying vehicles dynamics are existing. Most of them are focusing on mechanical simulation of the vehicle with a special focus on tyre/roadcontact. The main drawback of these is the requirement of real vehicle (this can be a simple prototype) to build a dynamical model. Another drawback is the difficulty to integrate virtual sensors and onboard artificial intelligence abilities. The aim of Virtual Intelligent Vehicle Urban Simulator is thus to overcome the general drawbacks of classical solutions by providing the possibility of designing vehicle virtual prototype with well simulated embedded sensors. This paper presents the global architecture of the simulator and draws some comparisons of simulations with real experiments.

Simulation Model of Carpooling with the Janus Multiagent Platform

Abstract Carpooling is an emerging alternative transportation mode that is eco-friendly and sustainable as it enables commuters to save time, travel resource, reduce emission and traffic congestion. The procedure of carpooling consists of a number of steps namely; (i) create a motive to carpool, (ii) communicate this motive with other agents, (iii) negotiate a plan with the interested agents, (iv) execute the agreed plans, and (v) provide a feedback to all concerned agents. The state-of-the-art research work on agent-based modeling is limited to a number of technical and empirical studies that are unable to handle the complex agent behavior in terms of coordination, communication and negotiations. In this paper, we present a conceptual design of an agent-based model (ABM) for the carpooling a that serves as a proof of concept. Our model for the carpooling application is a computational model that is used for simulating the interactions of autonomous agents and to analyze the effects of change in factors related to the infrastructure, behavior and cost. In our carpooling application, we use agent profiles and social networks to initiate our agent communication model and then employ a route matching algorithm, and a utility function to trigger the negotiation process between agents. We plan to, as a part of the future work, develop a prototype of our agent-based carpooling application based on the work presented in this paper. Furthermore, we also intend to carry out a validation study of our results with real data.

Towards a Multilevel Simulation Approach Based on Holonic Multiagent Systems

Simulation is an appropriate approach for studying complex systems that are inacessible through direct observations and measurements. In a simulation involving a great number of interacting entities, it is difficult to create a reliable and tractable abstraction of the real reference system. One of the involved problems is amount of computational resources required to handle microscopic simulation of large number of entities. One solution is to use macroscopic models. However, this type of models may be at hand unavailable or not reliable, or it doesn’t allow observations of individual behaviours. In this paper a multilevel simulation model is proposed to dynamically adapt the level of simulated behaviours while being as faithful as possible to the reference model. Our approach is based on Holonic Multi-Agent Systems and provides a generic scheduling model for multilevel simulations.