ARPS: A Framework for Development, Simulation, Evaluation, and Deployment of Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) are often used to optimize the use of the resources available in an environment. A flaw during the modelling phase or an unanticipated scenario during their execution, however, can make the agents behave not as planned. As a consequence, the resources can be poorly utilized and operate sub-optimized, but it can also bring the resources into an unexpected state. Such problems can be mitigated if there is a controlled environment to test the agents' behaviour before deployment. To this end, a simulated environment provides not only a way to test the agents' behaviour under different common scenarios but test them as well in adverse and rare state conditions. With this in mind, we have developed ARPS, an open-source framework that can be used to design computational agents, evaluate them in a simulated environment modelled after a real one, and then deploy and manage them seamlessly in the actual environment when the results of their evaluation are satisfactory.There is no general purpose MAS framework, to the best of our knowledge, that integrates the process of validation of the agents in a simulated environment before their deployment. To address this, we have developed ARPS, an open-source framework available at https://gitlab.com/arps/arps/ under MIT LICENSE [6], to seamlessly design, implement, assess the agents, and deploy the MAS after the results meet established criteria. ARPS stands for some of the core properties of agents: autonomy, reactivity, proactivity, and social ability. We use the management of resources of a data centre to illustrate our approach and how it can be used in other domains.In Section 2 we cover related work. Following this, Section 3 describes the background and architecture of the framework. The process of the implementation of the MAS to manage an experimental scenario is shown in Section 4. In Section 5 we discuss the findings, limitations, and future directions. Related WorkThere are multiple toolkits, platforms, and frameworks available for creating a MAS. In this section, we will describe a few of them. The works here by no means represent the only alternatives for creating MASs. For other options, refer to surveys on this topic, such as the one presented in [7].The works reviewed here implement common aspects of a MAS to work in an actual environment, such as communication, interoperability, storage, security, and resource discovery. Therefore, the users can focus on the definition of the agents and their behaviour, how they are organized, and how they interact to solve a problem.Among the popular MAS frameworks, JADE (also known as Java Agent Development Framework) [8] was created to address the problem of interoperability and provide an environment for the development of agents. It has no domain dependent requirement as seen in the other solutions. According to the authors, such dependencies were obstacles for the adoption of MAS technologies at the time of its conception. JADE simplifies the implementation of multi-agent systems through a middlew...

Special Issue “Multi-Agent Systems”: Editorial

“…In [11], the focus of the contribution and the main novelty regard seamless deployment on simulated and production environments, with little modifications as possible to the agent logic. The authors propose a coherent and integrated Python development framework encompassing testing, simulation, validation, and deployment software production stages, as well as autonomy, reactiveness to environment events, and social ability facets of an MAS.…”