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

How to design agent societies under a holonic perspective

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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.

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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

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  1. Massimo Cossentino
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  2. Nicolas Gaud
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  3. Vincent Hilaire
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  4. Stéphane Galland
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  5. Abderrafiâa Koukam
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Correspondence to Nicolas Gaud.

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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

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