Building the Core Architecture of a NASA Multiagent System Product Line

Abstract

The field of Software Product Lines (SPL) emphasizes build- ing a family of software products from which concrete products can be derived rapidly. This helps to reduce time-to-market, costs, etc., and can result in improved software quality and safety. Current Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies are concerned with devel- oping a single Multiagent System. The main contribution of this paper is a proposal to developing the core architecture of a Multiagent Systems Product Line (MAS-PL), exemplifying our approach with reference to a concept NASA mission based on multiagent technology

Using Formal Methods and Agent-Oriented Software Engineering for Modeling NASA Swarm-Based Systems

“…In [48], we show that a feature correlates with a role model, also shown in previous section. Thus, for a system to evolve from one state to another, we must compose or decompose the role models in nF and dF .…”

“…[14], while simultaneously improving quality, by making greater effort in design, implementation and test more financially viable, as this effort can be amortized over several products. The feasibility of building MASs product lines is presented in [49,48].…”

“…Each product in a MAS-PL is defined as a set of features. Given that all the products present a set of Figure 13 Evolution plan of our case study features that remain unchanged, the core architecture is defined as the part of all of the products that implement these common features [48]. Thus, a system can evolve by changing, or evolving, the set of non-core features.…”

Towards a MAS Product Line Engineering Approach

“…Peña et al [24] propose to enrich MaCMAS (Methodology for analyzing Complex Multi-Agent Systems) with software product lines to model and evolve MAS. They use UML to model a MAS-PL and focus on building the core architecture (common features).…”

“…extensions of MAS design models) for the same purpose. Example of that is proposed by Peña et al [24], where three kinds of models are used to specify variability: feature model, roles variation model, and plans variation model. In our view, roles and plans variation could be specified using a single variability model, such as a feature model.…”