Modelling and design of multi-agent systems

Agent technologies are now being applied to the development of largescale commercial and industrial software systems. Such systems are complex, involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of agents, and there is a pressing need for system modelling techniques that permit their complexity to be effectively managed, and principled methodologies to guide the process of system design. Without adequate techniques to support the design process, such systems will not be sufficiently reliable, maintainable or extensible, will be difficult to comprehend, and their elements will not be re-usable. In this paper, we present techniques for modelling agents and multi-agent systems which adapt and extend existing Object-Oriented representation techniques, and a methodology which provides a clear conceptual framework to guide system design and specification. We have developed these techniques for systems of agents based upon a particular Belief-Desire-Intention architecture, but have sought to provide a framework for the description of agent systems that is sufficiently general to be applicable to other agent architectures, and which may be extended in various ways.