Engineering Cooperative JADE Agents with the AMCIS Methodology: The Transportation Management Case Study

Abstract: This paper discusses in detail important analysis and design issues emerged during the development of an agent-based transportation e-market. This discussion is based on concepts coming from the AMCIS methodology and the JADE framework. The AMCIS methodology is specifically tailored to the analysis and design of cooperative information agent-based systems, while it supports both the levels of the individual agent structure and the agent society in the Multi-Agents Systems (MAS) development process. According to AMCIS, MAS are viewed as being composed of a number of autonomous cooperative agents that live in an organized society, in which each agent plays one or more specific roles, while their plans and interaction protocols are well defined. On the other hand JADE is a FIPA specifications compliant agent development environment that gives several facilities for an easy and fast implementation. Our aim is to reveal the mapping that may exists between the basic concepts proposed by AMCIS for agents specification and agents interactions and those provided by JADE for agents implementation, and therefore to propose a kind of roadmap for agents developers.