Agent Oriented Software Engineering

A Collaborative Research

Dr. Krishna Kavi, University of North Texas

Dr. David C. Kung, University of Texas at Arlington

Members

Agents are being used in an increasingly wide variety of applications from simple email filter programs to complex mission control and safety critical systems including air traffic control and nuclear power plant operations. In many cases, these applications are implemented using ad hoc approaches. Before complex industrial-strength agent-oriented software systems can be designed, disciplined approaches, tools and methodologies supporting analysis, specification and design are needed. The object-oriented paradigm is supported by modeling languages such as UML and a variety of CASE tools that aid during the analysis, design, implementation and validation phases of object-oriented software systems: all of which contributed to the universal acceptance of the object-oriented paradigm. The proposed agent-oriented framework and extensions to UML address this need. The approach is rooted in the BDI formalism, but stresses practical software design methods instead of reasoning theories. A software engineering methodology and a prototype environment for modeling and design of agent-oriented systems will be developed.