The Ingenias Project: Methods And Tool For Developing Multiagent Systems

Abstract

Agent-oriented methodologies are paving the way towards the adoption of agent technology in software industry. However, there are still several issues to address: testing mechanisms, specialized verification methods, a formally defined agent oriented development process, illustrative case studies, or better development tools. This should be considered in a changing context because of innovations in related areas, which are integrated in the agent paradigm. In this paper, we show a coordinated approach to address these needs in the context of a research project, INGENIAS. The purpose of this project is to contribute to the agent-oriented software engineering field by providing, on the basis of a well specified software development process, an open multi-agent systems (MAS) development framework that integrates methods, techniques and tools. The paper will show problems we face in the projects and the solutions we adopt for them.