Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

ASPECS: an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems

How to design agent societies under a holonic perspective

  • Published:
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Holonic multiagent systems (HMAS) offer a promising software engineering approach for developing complex open software systems. However the process of building Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and HMAS is mostly different from the process of building more traditional software systems as it introduces new design and development challenges. This paper introduces an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems called ASPECS. ASPECS is based on a holonic organisational metamodel and provides a step-by-step guide from requirements to code allowing the modelling of a system at different levels of details using a set of refinement methods. This paper details the entire ASPECS development process and provides a set of methodological guidelines for each process activity. A complete case study is also used to illustrate the design process and the associated notations. ASPECS uses UML as a modelling language. Because of the specific needs of agents and holonic organisational design, the UML semantics and notation are used as reference points, but they have been extended by introducing new specific profiles.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

References

  1. Software engineering body of knowledge. (2004). IEEE Computer Society.

  2. Argente, E., Julian, V., & Botti, V. (2006). Multi-agent system development based on organizations. In CoOrg’06, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (Vol. 150, pp. 55–71). Elsevier.

  3. Bernon C., Cossentino M., Pavón J. (2005) An overview of current trends in European aose research. Informatica 29(4): 379–390

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bernon, C., Gleizes, M.-P., Peyruqueou, S., & Picard, G. (2002). ADELFE, a methodology for adaptive multi-agent systems engineering. In ESAW, LNAI (Vol. 2577, pp. 156–169). Madrid, Spain: Springer-Verlag.

  5. Bresciani P., Giorgini P., Giunchiglia F., Mylopoulos J., Perini A. (2004) TROPOS: An agent- oriented software development methodology. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 8(3): 203–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Brussel H.V., Wyns J., Valckenaers P., Bongaerts L., Peeters P. (1998) Reference architecture for holonic manufacturing systems: PROSA. Computers in Industry 37: 255–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Caire, G., Coulier, W., Garijo, F. J., Gomez, J., Pavón, J., Leal, F., et al. (2002). Agent oriented analysis using message/uml. In M. Wooldridge, G. Weiß, & P. Ciancarini (Eds.), AOSE 2001, LNCS (Vol. 2222, pp. 119–135). Springer Verlag.

  8. Cernuzzi L., Cossentino M., Zambonelli F. (2005) Process models for agent-based development. Journal of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 18: 205–222

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Chella A., Cossentino M., Sabatucci L., Seidita V. (2006) Agile PASSI: An agile process for designing agents. International Journal of Computer Systems Science & Engineering. Special issue on Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems 21(2): 133–144

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chung L., Nixon B.A., Yu E.S.K. (1997) Dealing with change: An approach using non-functional requirements. Requirements Engineering 1(4): 238–260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Cockburn A. (1997) Structuring use cases with goals. Journal of Object-Oriented Programming 9(6): 56–62

    Google Scholar 

  12. Cockburn, A. (2000). Writing effective use cases. Addison-Wesley.

  13. Cossentino, M. (2005). From requirements to code with the PASSI methodology. In B. Henderson- Sellers & P. Giorgini (Eds.), Agent-oriented methodologies (Chap. IV, pp. 79–106). Hershey, PA, USA: Idea Group Publishing.

  14. Cossentino M., Gaglio S., Garro A., Seidita V. (2007) Method fragments for agent design methodologies: From standardization to research. International Journal on Agent Oriented Software Engineering 1(1): 91–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Cossentino, M., Galland, S., Gaud, N., Hilaire, V., & Koukam, A. (2008). How to control emergence of behaviours in a holarchy. In Self-Adaptation for Robustness and Cooperation in holonic multi-agent systems (SARC), workshop of the second IEEE international conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO). Venice, Italy: Isola di San Servolo.

  16. Coutinho, L. D. R., Sichman, J. S. A., & Boissier, O. (2005). Modeling organization in MAS: A comparison of models. In SEAS, Uberlândia.

  17. Dahl R.A. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and opposition. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  18. Dignum, M., Vazquez-Salceda, J., & Dignum, F. (2005). OMNI: Introducing social structure, norms and ontologies into agent organizations. In PROMAS@AAMAS, LNAI (Vol. 3346, pp. 181–198). Springer.

  19. Esteva, M., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J. A., Sierra, C., Garcia, P., & Arcos, J. L. (2001). On the formal specifications of electronic institutions. In Agent mediated electronic commerce, the European agentLink perspective (pp. 126–147). London, UK: Springer-Verlag.

  20. Ferber J. (1999) Multi-agent systems. An introduction to distributed artificial intelligence. London, Addison Wesley

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ferber, J., Gutknecht, O., & Michel, F. (2004). From agents to organizations: An organizational view of multi-agent systems. In AOSE-IV@AAMAS03, LNCS (Vol. 2935, pp. 214–230). Springer Verlag.

  22. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. (2001). FIPA RDF content language specification. Experimental, XC00011B.

  23. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. (2002). FIPA ACL message structure specification. Standard, SC00061G.

  24. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. (2002). FIPA communicative act library specification. Standard, SC00037J.

  25. Gandon, F. (2002). Ontology engineering: a survey and a return on experience. Rapport, Inria Research Report.

  26. Gaud, N., Galland, S., Hilaire, V., & Koukam, A. (2008). An organisational platform for holonic and multiagent systems. In PROMAS-6@AAMAS’08, Estoril, Portugal.

  27. Gaud, N., Hilaire, V., Galland, S., Koukam, A., & Cossentino, M. (2008). A verification by abstraction framework for organizational multi-agent systems. In AT2AI-6@AAMAS’08, Estoril, Portugal.

  28. Gerber, C., Siekmann, J., & Vierke, G. (1999). Holonic multi-agent systems. Technical Report DFKI-RR-99-03, DFKI-GmbH.

  29. Giunchiglia, F., Mylopoulos, J., & Perini, A. (2002). The Tropos software development methodology: Processes, models and diagrams. Technical Report 0111-20, ITC-IRST. Submitted AAMAS Conference 2002. A Knowledge Level Software Engineering 15.

  30. Gruber T. (1995) Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. International Journal Human-Computer Studies 43(5–6): 907–928

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Gruer P., Hilaire V., Koukam A., Rovarini P. (2004) Heterogeneous formal specification based on object-z and statecharts: Semantics and verification. Journal of Systems and Software 70(1–2): 95–105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Gutknecht, O., & Ferber, J. (2000). Madkit: A generic multi-agent platform autonomous agents. In AGENTS 2000 (pp. 78–79). Barcelona: ACM Press.

  33. Hannoun, M., Boissier, O., Sichman, J. S., & Sayettat, C. (2000). MOISE: An organizational model for multi-agent systems. In Advances in Artificial Intelligence, IBERAMIA-SBIA, Brazil (pp. 156–165).

  34. Henderson-Sellers B. (2003) Method engineering for OO systems development. Communications of the ACM 46(10): 73–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Hilaire, V., Koukam, A., Gruer, P., & Müller, J.-P. (2000). Formal specification and prototyping of multi-agent systems. In A. Omicini, R. Tolksdorf, & F. Zambonelli (Eds.), ESAW, LNAI (No. 1972). Springer Verlag.

  36. Iglesias, C., Garijo, M., Gonzalez, J., & Velasco, J. (1998). Intelligent agents IV: Agent theories, architectures, and languages. In Analysis and design of multi-agent systems using MAS-CommonKADS, LNAI (Vol. 1365, pp. 313–326). Springer-Verlag.

  37. Jennings N. (2001) An agent-based approach for building complex software systems. Communications of the ACM 44(4): 35–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Juan, T., Pearce, A., & Sterling, L. (2002). ROADMAP: Extending the Gaia methodology for complex open systems. In AAMAS ’02: Proceedings of the first international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, Bologna, Italy (pp. 3–10). New York: ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/544741.544744. ISBN: 1-58113-480-0.

  39. Koestler, A. (1967). The ghost in the machine. Hutchinson.

  40. Kolp M., Giorgini P., Mylopoulos J. (2006) Multi-agent architectures as organizational structures. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 13(1): 3–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Kristensen B., Osterbye K. (1996) Roles: Conceptual abstraction theory and practical language issues. Theory and Practice of Object Systems 2(3): 143–160

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Object Management Group. (2003). MDA guide, v1.0.1, OMG/2003-06-01.

  43. Odell, J., Nodine, M., & Levy, R. (2005). A metamodel for agents, roles, and groups. In J. Odell, P. Giorgini, & J. Müller (Eds.), AOSE, LNCS. Springer.

  44. Omicini, A. (2000). SODA: Societies and infrastructures in the analysis and design of agent-based systems. In AOSE, LNCS (Vol. 1957, pp. 185–193). Springer-Verlag.

  45. Padgham, L., & Winikoff, M. (2002). Prometheus: A methodology for developing intelligent agents. In AOSE.

  46. Pavón, J., Gómez-Sanz, J., & Fuentes, R. (2005). The INGENIAS methodology and tools. In Agent-oriented methodologies (pp. 236–276). NY, USA: Idea Group Publishing.

  47. Sauvage, S. (2004). Agent oriented design patterns: A case study. In AAMAS ’04 (pp. 1496–1497). Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society.

  48. Searle J. (1969) Speech acts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

    Google Scholar 

  49. Seidita, V., Cossentino, M., Hilaire, V., Gaud, N., Galland, S., Koukam, A., et al. (2009). The metamodel: A starting point for design processes construction. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (IJSEKE) (in press).

  50. Shen W., Maturana F., Norrie D.H. (2000) MetaMorph II: An agent-based architecture for distributed intelligent design and manufacturing. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing 11(3): 237–251

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Simon H.A. (1996) The science of artificial (3rd ed). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

    Google Scholar 

  52. Sommerville, I. (2004). Software engineering (7th ed.). International Computer Science Series. Addison Wesley, Pearson Education.

  53. SPEM. (2007). Software process engineering metamodel specification, v2.0, final adopted specification, ptc/07-03-03. Object Management Group.

  54. Tran, Q.-N. N., & Low, G. C. (2005). Agent-oriented methodologies, Comparison of Ten Agent-Oriented Methodologies (Chap. XII, pp. 341–367). Idea Group.

  55. Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality. Shambhala.

  56. Wooldridge M., Jennings N.R., Kinny D. (2000) The Gaia methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 3(3): 285–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Zambonelli, F., Jennings, N. R., & Wooldridge, M. (2003). Developing multiagent systems: The GAIA methodology. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 12(3), 317–370. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/958961.958963.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Multiagent Systems Group, System and Transport Laboratory, University of Technology of Belfort Montbéliard, 90010, Belfort Cedex, France

    Massimo Cossentino, Nicolas Gaud, Vincent Hilaire, Stéphane Galland & Abderrafiâa Koukam

  2. ICAR Institute, National Research Council, Palermo, Italy

    Massimo Cossentino

Authors
  1. Massimo Cossentino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nicolas Gaud
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Vincent Hilaire
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  4. Stéphane Galland
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  5. Abderrafiâa Koukam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolas Gaud.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cossentino, M., Gaud, N., Hilaire, V. et al. ASPECS: an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 20, 260–304 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-009-9099-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-009-9099-4

Keywords