Abstract

User needs-driven and computer-supported development of pervasive heterogeneous and dynamic multi-agent systems remains a great challenge for agent research community. This paper presents an innovative approach to composing, validating and supporting multi-agent systems at run-time. Multi-agent systems (MASs) can and should be assembled quasi-automatically and dynamically based on high-level user specifications which are transformed into a shared and common goal–mission. Dynamically generating agents could also be supported as a pervasive service. Heterogeneity of MASs refers to diverse functionality and constituency of the system which include mobile as well as host associated software agents. This paper proposes and demonstrates on-demand and just-in-time agent composition approach which is combined with run-time support for MASs. Run-time support is based on mission cost-efficiency and shared objectives which enable termination, generation, injection and replacement of software agents as the mission evolves at run-time. We present the formal underpinning of our approach and describe the prototype tool – called eHermes, which has been implemented using available agent platforms. Analysis and results of evaluating eHermes are presented and discussed.

Keywords: Pervasive software agents; Mission; Heterogeneous multi-agent systems; On-demand; Run-time support; Agent composition

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Conceptual overview

3. Mission formal model

4. EHermes: mission-based MAS generator

5. Case study

6. Empirical results

6.1. Optimization test

6.2. MCA workload test

7. eHermes advanced features

8. Related work

9. Conclusion and future work

Acknowledgements

References