Um arcabouço baseado em componentes para engenharia de ambientes em sistemas multiagentes abertos

Abstract

Multiagent systems (MAS) are considered a high level abstration for design and engineering of complex systems. Such systems are characterized by organization structures and coordination process more articulated and dynamic. Usually, agents cooperate and coexist in an environment. In addition, there is a general consense in the research community that an environment is an essential part of open and dynamic MAS. However, given the dynamic characteristics present in complex systems, only the use of the agent-based paradigm in the software development does not guarantee the flexibility and scalability of the project ahead of the inevitable changes on requirements. For this reason, the component-based development have been identified as promising in the building of applications with greater ability to adapt to the changes of its requirements. This work aims at developing a component-based framework for engineering open MAS enviroments. The framework is based on the concept of dynamic software composition and supported by a specification that demand mapping from agents concepts to components in order to ensure the flexibility and reusability provided in the component approach. In addition, i) agents and resources are used to compose the software, ii) components are used to compose agents, and iii) objects and aspects are used to develop the functional and non-functional components requirements. The favorable results of this proposal were checked in experiments developed in four case studies.