Extending the capability concept for flexible BDI agent modularization

  • Authors:

  • Lars Braubach;Alexander Pokahr;Winfried Lamersdorf

  • Affiliations:

  • Distributed Systems and Information Systems, Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany;Distributed Systems and Information Systems, Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany;Distributed Systems and Information Systems, Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • ProMAS'05 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Programming Multi-Agent Systems
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Multi-agent systems are a natural way of decomposing complex systems into more manageable and decentralized units. Nevertheless, as single agents can represent complex subsystems themselves, software engineering principles for the design and implementation of coherent parts of single agents are necessary for producing modular and reusable software artifacts. This paper picks up the formerly proposed capability concept for structuring BDI agents in functional clusters, and generalizes and extends it to support a higher degree of reusability. The resulting mechanism allows for designing and implementing BDI agents as a composition of configurable agent modules (capabilities). It is based on a black-box approach with export interfaces that is in line with object-oriented engineering principles.