Fall 2008

Pre-requisites: CIS 730 & 740 (undergraduate work in one of the two courses may be acceptable with the permission of Dr. DeLoach)

This course will look at the agent-oriented paradigm as an approach to analyzing, designing, and implementing large, complex, distributed, and adaptive software systems. The agent-oriented paradigm is a further abstraction of the object-oriented paradigm where agents are a specialization of objects. Instead of simple objects, with methods that can be invoked by other objects, agents coordinate with each other and work proactively to accomplish individual and system-level goals. The course will explore the three key concepts associated with Agent-Oriented Software Engineering action, interaction, and organization and how to integrate them into the software development lifecycle. The course will focus on using agent-oriented methodologies for creating highly adaptive and reconfigurable agent-based systems. The class project will focus on developing a team of cooperative robots using a cooperative robotic simulator.

Note: Online students will use this web site in conjunction with K-State Online where all the lectures will be available.

Topics

• Intro to agents and multiagent systems
• Intro to Agent oriented software engineering
• Multiagent Organizations
• Organizational Models and Goal Models
• Organizational Policies
• Organization-based Multiagent Systems Engineering Methodology
• OPEN and Method Engineering
• Example Information Systems & Cooperative Robotics Applications
• Interaction & Cooperation
• Task Distribution & Communications
• Coordination Protocols
• Modelling Agent-Environment Interactions