An agent-based approach for building complex software systems
Communications of the ACM
The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
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Researchers have recognized multi-agent systems (MAS) as being a promising means to cope with distributed and complex problems. However, how to analyze and design an agent-based system in practical environments is still difficult. Based on the inherent consistency between objects and agents, MAS and human social organizations, we propose an approach using comparatively mature object-oriented (OO) methodologies and tools (mostly UML) to model MAS from the point of view of organization depiction. This paper uses a distributed logistics management system (DLMS) as an example and describes a method to model MAS based on extended UML from the following three aspects:•extracting roles for agent organizations based on the theory of use cases,•depicting the static organizational structures of MAS based on the semantics and syntax of class diagrams, and•extending collaboration diagrams, sequence diagrams and state chart diagrams to portray the interactive behaviors among agent roles and the reasoning behaviors within agent roles themselves.