Computer aided multi-agent system engineering

Currently, multi-agent systems (MAS) are being used in an increasingly wide variety of application areas, ranging from operational support and diagnosis, electronic commerce, manufacturing, information finding and filtering, planning and resource allocation, and service integration. Observing from these developed MAS that show great achievements, we could have the following realizations: A lot of design efforts have to be paid varying from communication and cooperation to configuration between agents. Such efforts are often in common with respect to the ideas or methodologies. Such efforts are also becoming 'entrance barrier' of the development of MAS for general system developers. In case not managing such effort well, the resulting MAS might not do as the developers expect. As a result, an engineering approach is necessary for better managing of the development of MAS. This study describes the concept of computer aided/automated multi-agent system engineering and its need on the life cycle of MAS, and then presents Eureka, a computer aided/automated multi-agent system engineering tool, which is implemented at our institution and aims to simplify the configuration of MAS as possibly as it can.