SADIO Electronic Journal of Informatics and

Operations Research

http://www.dc.uba.ar/sadio/ejs

vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-12 (2000)


 

 

 

A Java Framework for Multi-agent Systems

 

Henri Avancini1,2

Analía Amandi1

 
1Universidad Nacional del Centro, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas
ISISTAN Research Institute
Campus Universitario Paraje Arroyo Seco, (7000) - Tandil - Buenos Aires, Argentina
E-mail: {henri, amandi}@exa.unicen.edu.ar
2 Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Departamento de Informática y Estadística
Buenos Aires 1400, (8300) - Neuquén, Argentina
E-mail: havancin@uncoma.edu.ar

 

Abstract

The complexity of distributed systems (multi-agent systems in particular) involves the design and coordination of many entities (called agents). This activity is not trivial and there is not a standard way to do this. So, it is desirable to have tools for reusing previous designed components and relations between them. Frameworks allow design and code to be reused. Intelligent agents cover a big amount of application domains but we can detect an important set of common characteristics that can be abstracted for reusing. This paper presents a framework for multi-agent systems (FraMaS) composed by these common characteristics. FraMaS is used to design agents that have capabilities for perceiving environment, communicating, and deliberating about what to do next.

Keywords: Framework, Multi-agent System, Software Agent, Java, Internet Programming