From a Conceptual Framework for Agents and Objects to a Multi-Agent System Modeling Language

Silva, Viviane Torres da; Lucena, Carlos José Pereira de

doi:10.1023/b:agnt.0000019691.42633.07

Cited by 61 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…They could be included by specializing more general FAML concepts. Literature from the following areas was relevant: agent software engineering (e.g., [16], [26], [32], [33]), AI (e.g., [34], [35], [36]), distributed AI (e.g., [37], [38], and cognitive science (e.g., [39]). The output of this step was a list of concepts pending succinct definition.…”

Section: Metamodel Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper therefore does not pursue a UML-based modeling language such as a UML profile, as done effectively in AUML [23], [24] and AML [25]. Semantic problems appear when the basic element in Agentoriented Software Engineering (AOSE), i.e., the agent, is constrained to be a subtype of the UML standard's Class construct [26]-although future work will evaluate the possibility of agent being a subtype of (UML) Component [27] or of Classifier [28]. 2 The concrete proposal of this paper is the metamodel FAML (FAME 3 Agent-oriented Modeling Language), 4 which was initially described in an early prototype in [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

FAML: A Generic Metamodel for MAS Development

Beydoun

Low

Henderson‐Sellers

et al. 2009

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

130

122

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In some areas of software engineering research, there are several metamodels claiming to capture the main issues. Though it is profitable to have variety at the beginning of a research field, after some time, the diversity of metamodels becomes an obstacle, for instance to the sharing of results between research groups. To reach consensus and unification of existing metamodels, metamodel-driven software language engineering can be applied. This paper illustrates an application of software language engineering in the agent-oriented software engineering research domain. Here, we introduce a relatively generic agent-oriented metamodel whose suitability for supporting modeling language development is demonstrated by evaluating it with respect to several existing methodology-specific metamodels. First, the metamodel is constructed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down analysis and best practice. The concepts thus obtained and their relationships are then evaluated by mapping to two agent-oriented metamodels: TAO and Islander. We then refine the metamodel by extending the comparisons with the metamodels implicit or explicit within five more extant agent-oriented approaches: Adelfe, PASSI, Gaia, INGENIAS, and Tropos. The resultant FAML metamodel is a potential candidate for future standardization as an important component for engineering an agent modeling language. Disciplines Physical Sciences and Mathematics Publication DetailsBeydoun, G., Low, G. Abstract-In some areas of software engineering research, there are several metamodels claiming to capture the main issues. Though it is profitable to have variety at the beginning of a research field, after some time, the diversity of metamodels becomes an obstacle, for instance to the sharing of results between research groups. To reach consensus and unification of existing metamodels, metamodel-driven software language engineering can be applied. This paper illustrates an application of software language engineering in the agent-oriented software engineering research domain. Here, we introduce a relatively generic agent-oriented metamodel whose suitability for supporting modeling language development is demonstrated by evaluating it with respect to several existing methodology-specific metamodels. First, the metamodel is constructed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down analysis and best practice. The concepts thus obtained and their relationships are then evaluated by mapping to two agent-oriented metamodels: TAO and Islander. We then refine the metamodel by extending the comparisons with the metamodels implicit or explicit within five more extant agent-oriented approaches: Adelfe, PASSI, Gaia, INGENIAS, and Tropos. The resultant FAML metamodel is a potential candidate for future standardization as an important component for engineering an agent modeling language.Index Terms-Modeling, metamodel, multiagent systems.

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Section: Metamodel Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FAML: A Generic Metamodel for MAS Development

Beydoun

Low

Henderson‐Sellers

et al. 2009

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

130

122

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this work we use a grid-based domain that allows us to highlight some properties which are more difficult to represent in other domains. The same domain has been used in other works [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning domain structure through probabilistic policy reuse in reinforcement learning

Fernández

Veloso

2012

Prog Artif Intell

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Policy Reuse is a transfer learning approach to improve a reinforcement learner with guidance from previously learned similar action policies. The method uses the past policies as a probabilistic bias where the learner chooses among the exploitation of the ongoing learned policy, the exploration of random unexplored actions, and the exploitation of past policies. In this work we demonstrate that Policy Reuse further contributes to the learning of the structure of a domain. Interestingly and almost as a side effect, Policy Reuse identifies classes of similar policies revealing a basis of core-policies of the domain. We demonstrate theoretically that, under a set of conditions to be satisfied, reusing such a set of core-policies allows us to bound the minimal expected gain received while learning a new policy. In general, Policy Reuse contributes to the overall goal of lifelong reinforcement learning, as (i) it incrementally builds a policy library; (ii) it provides a mechanism to reuse past policies; and (iii) it learns an abstract domain structure in terms of corepolicies of the domain.

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“…Organizations [Ferber et al, 2003] are social locations in which groups of agents play roles. An organization can embody many sub-organizations, but each organization belongs to only one environment [Silva and Lucena, 2004b]. Agents can execute in different organizations and they can also migrate among environments and organizations in order to obtain resources or services not found locally.…”

Section: Contextual Norm Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%