Agents & Artefacts (A&A)

Agents & Artefacts (A&A)

A&A (Agents & Artefacts) is a novel paradigm for modelling and engineering software systems, introducing agents, artifacts, and workspaces as first-class abstractions

A&A is investigated along different (related) perspectives:

  • In the context of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), as an enrichment of the basic agent paradigm with the introduction of the artifact abstraction, to model and engineer those parts of a MAS which act like agent working-environment, i.e. resources and tools which are constructed, shared and used by agents to support their activities, both individual and cooperative.
  • In the context of mainstream programming languages and software engineering, as a novel general-purspose paradigm to design and program software systems, in particular concurrent (and distributed) ones.
  • In the context of Complex System Modelling and Simulations, as an enrichment of the basic agent-based model typically adopted in MASB (Multi-Agent based simulations)

A&A Related Projects

  • CArtAgO, middleware for support artifact-based working environments in multi-agent systems
  • simpA. simpA is a Java-based agent-oriented framework for developing applications in terms of workspaces with agents and artifacts. simpA exploits CArtAgO for what artifacts.
  • simpAL, a language / platform based on A&A
  • simpA-WS, simpA-WS is a library which makes it possible to design and build service-oriented applications based on Web Services using simpA / CArtAgO.
  • SODA, a methodology in the context of AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering), providing a support for analysis and design of MAS social and environment aspects
  • TuCSoN, a MAS coordination infrastructure providing tuple centres as a kind of general-purpose coordination artifacts, i.e. artifacts with coordination functionalities

CArtAgO  •  simpA  •  simpAL  •  SODA  •  TuCSoN

Alessandro Ricci email  •  Andrea Omicini email  •  Mirko Viroli email