Multi-Agent Programming - Languages, Tools and Applications

This book, along with the previous work Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Platforms and Applications, provides and maintains an updated state of the art related to Multi-Agent Systems programming.

This volume includes chapters describing programming languages and their platforms, discussing the features of the languages, the communication mechanisms they provide, their underlying execution model and interpreters, their expressiveness, verification possibilities, and the software engineering principles that they follow. Additional chapters present and evaluate various types of development tools such as debugging tools, testing tools, modelling tools, environment artifacts, and integrated development environments (IDEs). Also included is a chapter dedicated to a specific application providing a multi-agent environment for negotiation, the chapter describes how the target multi-agent system has been designed and specified. Specific topics featured include:

• MetateM, an approach to capture the dynamic nature of agents and their groups

• the IndiGolog language, its implementation, and applications that have been realized with it

• Brahms, a multi-agent modelling language for simulating human work practice, currently used at NASA

• GOAL , a high-level language to program rational agents that derive their choice of action from their beliefs and goals

• JIAC, a Java-based agent framework with an emphasis on industrial requirements such as software standards, security, management, and scalability

• Agent Factory, a cohesive framework for the development and deployment of multi-agent systems