METHODOLOGIES FOR

DEVELOPING INTELLIGENT AGENTS

By:
2090505 NOOR HAIZAT
2090495 AHMAD NAZREN HAKIMI
2090501 MOHD KHAIRUL ANWAR
DEFINITION
Used to support the development of agent systems
Multiagent systems become more established in
computer science community’s consciousness – there
will be effort increment to devise it
Agent-based solution appropriates
Environment is open – highly dynamic, uncertain &
complex
Natural metaphor-type agents
Expertise/data distributed
System of legacy
Agent-oriented Analysis & Design
Techniques
Consist of two :
OO development and either extend existing OO
methodologies or adapt OO technologies to the purpose
of AOSE
Use knowledge engineering or other techniques
Examples from Wooldridge (direct from the
book!)
Kinny et al : the Australian A.I Institute (AAII)
methodology
PRS-based belief-desire-intention technology
 Wooldridge et al : Gaia
Object-oriented analysis and design – FUSION,
specifically
Odell et al : agent UML
Using unified modeling language (UML)
The Pitfalls of Agent Development
Agent-oriented (AO) development receive only little
attention
Need to consider pragmatics of AO softwares
Consist of seven categories :
Political
Management
Conceptual
Analysis and design
Micro (agent) level
Macro (society) level
implementation
Things to be stressed out!
Don’t consider agents as magic device!
Something ordinary software can’t do, same goes to
agents
No such thing as system are easy with agent presence
Agents may solve certain problem – but not making
impossible possible!
Prometheus Methodology

Based on the name of Greek’s Titan –

Prometheus
has been developed over the last several
years in collaboration with Agent Oriented
Software(AOS)
Prometheus Methodology
Why a new methodology?
Because object-oriented techniques are just not natural
to develop an agent system
As agents need ‘proactive’ characteristic, we need
methodology that supports proactive agents needs to
support the explicit modelling of goals, which is not
generally a part of object-oriented methodologies. By
contrast, Prometheus models goals and thus supports
the design of proactive agents.
Prometheus Methodology #2
Other reasons are :
 The provision of a process for determining the types of
agents in the system.
 Treating messages as components in their own right,

not just as labels on arcs. This allows a message (or an

event) to be handled by multiple plans, which is
crucial to achieving flexibility and robustness.
 Distinguishing passive components (data, beliefs)

from active components (agents, capabilities, plans):

with object-oriented modelling, everything is
modelled as (passive) objects.
Phases of the Prometheus
methodology
 1) System Specification Phase
focuses on identifying the goals and basic
functionalities of the system, along with inputs
(percepts) and outputs (actions).
including:
Identifying the system goals.
Developing use case scenarios illustrating the
system’s operation.
Identifying the basic functionalities of the system.
Specifying the interface between the system and its
environment in terms of actions and percepts.
 2) Architectural Design Phase
uses the outputs from the previous phase to determine
which agent types the system will contain and how
they will interact.
Including :
Deciding what agent types will be implemented and
developing the agent descriptors.
Capturing the system’s overall (static) structure using
the system overview diagram.
Describing the dynamic behaviour of the system using
interaction diagrams and interaction protocols.
 3) Detailed Design Phase
looks at the internals of each agent and how it will accomplish its tasks
within the overall system.
That includes :

The refinement of agents in terms of capabilities, giving the agent

overview diagram and capability descriptors

The development of process specifications.

Design of the plans within a capability and the events generated and
handled by these plans

Specification of the algorithm within each plan, as well as associated data

(or beliefs) and detailed specification of events.
 Conclusion
Developing agents system are not as easy as it looks
To create the better system for better future, many
researches have been done
Every system are capable; don’t simply assume its non-
capabilities towards some cases
Always grateful!
Fin…..
Thanks to :
-Allah
-Mrs Muslihah Wook
-Google
-Wikipedia
-Adobe Reader 9.0
-UPNM LAN connection