Integrating  Artifact-Based Environments with Heterogeneous Agent-Programming Platforms

The "Agents and Artifacts" approach to developing multi-agent systems, and particularly the CARTAGO infrastructure to develop artifact-based environments, is becoming increasingly popular, as are platforms based on agent-oriented programming languages. However, so far there has been no work on developing multi-agent systems where agents implemented and deployed in different agent-programming platforms can interact as part of the same multi-agent system, with a shared environment. Due to the generality of CARTAGO environments and its Java-based implementation, we have successfully implemented a multi-agent system where Jason, 2APL, and simpA (which is activity-oriented rather than BDI) agents work together by sharing an artifact-based environment. This paper shows how this was achieved by allowing Jason, 2APL, and simpA agents to interact with CARTAGO artifacts, describing a general approach to developing such heterogeneous multi-agent systems.