Agent OrientedSoftwareEngineering
Agent OrientedSoftwareEngineering
Agent OrientedSoftwareEngineering
Agent Theory
Questions/answers
(i) Describe the steps in the AAII Methodology and the output of each step.
The AAII methodology is aimed at elaborating the models. It
may be summarized as follows.
(1) Identify the relevant roles in the application domain, and, on the basis of
these, develop an agent class hierarchy. An example role might be a weather
monitor, whereby agent i is required to make agent j aware of the prevailing
weather conditions every hour.
(2) Identify the responsibilities associated with each role, the services required
by and provided by the role, and then determine the goals associated with
each service. With respect to the above example, the goals would be to find
out the current weather, and to make agent j aware of t h s information.
(3) For each goal, determine the plans that may be used to achieve it, and the
context conditions under whch each plan is appropriate. With respect to the
above example, a plan for the goal of making agent j aware of the weather
conditions might involve sending a message to j.
(4) Determine the belief structure of the system - the information requirements
for each plan and goal. With respect to the above example, we might propose
a unary predicate w indspeed(x) to represent the fact that the current wind
speed is x. A plan to determine the current weather conditions would need
to be able to represent this information.
Note that the analysis process will be iterative, as in more traditional methodologies.
The outcome will be a model that closely corresponds to the PRS agent
architecture. As a result, the move from end-design to implementation using PRS
is relatively simple
(iii) If we consider the agent systems development process as consisting of the following
subprocesses, which subprocesses does the Gaia methodology cover? Explain your
answer.
Requirement specification à Analysis à Design à Detailed Design à Implementation