Title: Formal driven prototyping approach for multiagent systems

Authors: Vincent Hilaire, Pablo Gruer, Abderrafiaa Koukam, Olivier Simonin

Addresses: SeT Laboratory, UTBM, 90010 Belfort Cedex, France. ' SeT Laboratory, UTBM, 90010 Belfort Cedex, France. ' SeT Laboratory, UTBM, 90010 Belfort Cedex, France. ' Maia Team, LORIA, BP 239 – 54506 Vandoeuvre-ls-Nancy Cedex, France

Abstract: Even if Multiagent Systems (MASs) are recognised as an appealing paradigm for designing many computer systems ranging from complex distributed systems to intelligent software applications, they are still difficult to engineer. A common point of MAS engineering methodologies is the production of different work products or models during the different phases. Each work product or model helps to progress towards an implementation of the system under development. Nevertheless, there are very few ways to ensure that the work products and models produced are validated against the requirements. The aim of this paper is to present a formal driven prototyping approach for MAS. This process provides a support for incremental specification leading to an executable model of the system being built. Indeed, this process is based upon a formal organisational framework which uses a formal notation, namely OZS. The process is illustrated through the specification of a multiagent architecture.

Keywords: multi-agent systems; MAS; formal specification; validation; verification; prototyping.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOSE.2008.017317

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2008 Vol.2 No.2, pp.246 - 266

Published online: 26 Feb 2008 *

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