Two Decades of Software Agent Platform Engineering – Part 1

Abstract

Not many computer science topics have enjoyed a similarly broad interest like autonomous software agents. In the last 20 years, more than 180 platforms were created, intended to facilitate agent application creation. In recent years, agent platform research seems to have lost again much of its attractiveness. This article is the first part of a three-part survey on agent platform technology. We will at first discuss the role of platforms for agent software engineering in particular and present a classification of agent platforms.