Task: Design Agent Interactions

Task sourced from Tropos

Purpose

The purpose of this task is to design agents interactions through agent communications acts.

Relationships

Roles	Primary Performer: MAS Developer	Additional Performers:
Inputs	Mandatory: [Agent - Analysis slot] [Agent - Design slot]	Optional: [Domain Analysis slot] [Organization - Design slot]
Outputs	Tropos Agent Interaction Diagram
Process Usage	MMF Design Interaction with Tropos > Design Interaction with Tropos > Design Agent Interactions Tropos > Detailed Design Phase > Design Interaction > Design Agent Interactions Tropos PL Variant 2 > Domain Engineering Iteration 1..n > Domain Design Phase > Design Interactions with Tropos > Design Agent Interactions

Main Description

During this task communications among agents are specified in detail. Practical approaches for this task are usually proposed within specific development platforms and depend on the features of the adopted agent programming language. In other words, this task is usually strictly related to implementation choices. Moreover, the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is supporting the extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as the language which should enable the specification of agent systems. Agent UML packages modeling well-known agent communication protocols, such as the ContractvNet, are already available. See Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology (p. 220-221) for more information.

Steps

Describing agents communication acts

During this step Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML) sequence diagrams can be exploited in order to represent Interaction Diagrams. In AUML sequence diagrams, agents correspond to objects, whose life-line is independent from the specific interaction to be modeled communication acts between agents correspond to asynchronous message arcs.

More Information

Whitepapers	Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology