Modeling of Multi Agent System: From Analysis to Design
Rajib Kumar Chatterjee, Mangilal Sharma, Anirban Sarkar · International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications · 2016
Multi Agent System (MAS) is an assembly of autonomous, proactive and dynamic entities called agents. These agents provide some service once an event is invoked. By providing the designated service the MAS achieves a specific goal. A logic based formal analysis of MAS is necessary to understand the system, its structure and dynamics. A systematic and sequential methodology is used for analysis of MAS. As a result of analysis several constructs in form of templates is obtained to represent the different facets of MAS. This is extremely necessary as it allows to explicitly identify how agents directly or indirectly interact or coordinate and collaborate with each other. This paper proposes an Architectural Design Language called Agent Description Language (ADL) that will be required to map these analysis templates to the design phase. Establishing the correctness of the structural transformation and correspondence from analysis to design phase constitutes the other side of the proposal. The proposed ADL has been used to get the corresponding classes of the templates generated. Jason, the universal MAS programming language has been used to implement the ADL classes to get the logical design which conforms to the conceptual design phase. The case study of Medical Emergency Service (MES) has also been taken to illustrate the proposals and findings.