It is crucial that the basic principles and lessons of software and knowledge engineering are applied to the development and deployment of multi-agent systems. At present, the majority of existing agent applications are developed in an ad hoc fashion - following little or no rigorous design methodology and with limited specification of the requirements or design of the agents or of a multi-agent system as a whole. To develop methods with which both the requirements on such systems and the systems themselves can be modelled and specified at a conceptually acceptable level of detail, characteristics of real-world multi-agent applications need to be identified, in relation to specific domains. Such specifications describe the semantics of systems without concern for implementation details, providing a basis for verification, validation and testing of the functionality of the systems in the light of the specified requirements. The purpose of this SIG is to focus on these issues. As such, the SIG will bring together a strong sub-community of AgentLink in an area of particular European strength generally.
Specific topics to be addressed within this SIG are:
- requirements engineering for agent systems;
- analysis and design techniques for agent systems;
- formal techniques for specification, design, and verification of agent systems;
- specific ontologies for agent requirements and agent models;
- reuse of agents and agent components;
- libraries of generic models of specific types of agents and agent components;
- validation and testing techniques
- tools to support the agent and multi-agent system development process.
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