Abstract. Design patterns already proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors of object-oriented software; now, they are, candidate to play a similar role in the MAS (multi-agent system) context. In this work we describe our experiences in the identification, production and application of patterns for agents. Some patterns are described together with the classification criteria and documentation approach we adopt. Upon them, we base a pattern reuse process that can be considered one of the distinguishing elements of the design methodology (PASSI) we use to develop MAS. Patterns can be applied to an existing agent or used to produce a new one with the support of a specific web based application that can read both the JAVA source code and XMI representation of the agent design documentation. After the successful application of the desired pattern(s), the source code and the design diagrams (usually a structural and dynamic diagram) of the agent can be exported. Some experimental results are reported in order to demonstrate the utility of this approach in automatically producing an interesting percentage of code lines.

Robotic systems are often quite complex to develop; they are huge, heavily constrained from the non-functional point of view and they implement challenging algorithms. The lack of integrated methods with reuse approaches leads robotic developers to reinvent the wheel each time a new project starts. This paper proposes to reuse the experience done when building robotic applications, by catching it into design patterns. These represent a general mean for (i) reusing proved solutions increasing the final quality, (ii) communicatEmail addresses: chella@unipa.it (Antonio Chella), cossentino@pa.icar.cnr.it (Massimo Cossentino), gaglio@unipa.it (Salvatore Gaglio), sabatucci@dinfo.unipa.it (Luca Sabatucci), seidita@dinfo.unipa.it (Valeria Seidita) Preprint submitted to Systems and Software October 21, 2009 ing the knowledge about a domain and (iii) reducing the development time and effort. Despite of this generality, the proposed repository of patterns is specific for multi-agent robotic systems. These patterns are documented by a set of design diagrams and the corresponding implementing code is obtained through a series of automatic transformations. Some patterns extracted from an existing and freely available repository are presented. The paper also discusses an experimental setup based on the construction of a complete robotic application obtained by composing some highly reusable patterns.

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The design of a an agent system for robotics is a problem that involves aspects coming from many different disciplines (robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, software engineering). The most difficult part of it often consists in producing and tuning the algorithms that incorporates the robot behavior (planning, obstacle avoidance, ) and abilities (vision, manipulation, navigation, )

Energy management is nowadays a subject of great importance and complexity. It consists in choosing among a set of sources able to produce energy that will give energy to a set of loads by minimising losses and costs. The sources and loads are heterogeneous, distributed and the reaction of the system, the choice of sources, must be done in real-time to avoid power outage. The goal of this paper is to present a system able to selfregulate a heterogeneous set of power sources and loads organised as a coherent group of entities that is called microgrid, in order to optimize several criteria such as: cost and efficiency. This system is based upon the Multi-Agent Systems paradigm. Each micro-grid entity is modelled as an autonomous agent able to interact and with it owns decision making mechanism. It takes into account the characteristics of the source or load types it belongs to and self-organizes with other agents in order to globally optimize the given criteria.