Enhancing Software Qualities in Multi-Agent Systems using Self-Adaptation
Dídac Gil de la Iglesia, Danny Weyns · 2012
Abstract. Engineering multi-agent systems (MAS) is known to be a complex task. One of the reasons lays in the complexity to combine mul-tiple concerns that a MAS is expected to address, such as system func-tionality, coordination, robustness, etc. A well-recognized approach to manage system complexity is the use of self-adaptive (SA) mechanisms. Self-adaptation allows to adjust the system behavior in order to achieve certain software qualities (optimization, fault-tolerance, etc.). The key idea behind self-adaptation is complexity management through separa-tion of concerns. In this paper we introduce SA-MAS, an architectural approach that integrates the functionalities provided by a MAS with software qualities offered by a SA solution. The paper presents a ref-erence model for SA-MAS and applies it to a Mobile learning case, in which we deal with robustness properties. In addition, we apply formal verification techniques as an approach to guarantee the requirements of the SA-MAS application. 1