Medea: a framework for building multiagent systems development methods based on fragments reuse

• Grant number: 09/10121-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: October 01, 2009
• End date: September 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computing Methodologies and Techniques
• Principal Investigator: Jaime Simão Sichman
• Grantee: Jaime Simão Sichman
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are systems composed of a set of software agents that interact in order to achieve individual or common goals. In one hand, MAS constitutes a new technology and, in other hand, MAS constitutes a new paradigm for software development. The goal of this research is to propose a framework for constructing MAS development methods - the Medea Method Framework - developed using existing MAS methodologies, such as GAIA (Zambonelli et al 2003), Tropos (Bresciani et al 2004) and MaSE(Wood e DeLoach 2001), as well as MAS organization models, such as MOISE+ (Hubner et al 2002) and AGR (Ferber et al. 2004) models. The Medea Method Framework will be develop using the Situational Method Engineering approach that consists in creating a specific development method for each project situation, assembling parts, or fragments, of existing methods. This framework benefits are twofold. First, it allows MAS methodologies and organization models reuse in the context of situational methods. Second, it allows that new researches results in the MAS field can be easily integrated as new method fragments, bringing the gap between the underlying technology and method technology. (AU)