Advances in Agent Oriented Software Engineering have focused on the provision of frameworks and toolkits to aid in the creation of Multi Agent Systems (MASs). However, despite the need to address the inherent complexity of such systems, little progress has been made in the development of tools to allow for the debugging and understanding of their inner workings. This paper introduces a novel performance analysis system, named AgentSpotter, which facilitates such analysis. AgentSpotter was developed by mapping conventional profiling concepts to the domain of MASs. We outline its integration into the Agent Factory multi agent framework.
The JADE Platform and Experiences with Mobile MAS Applications.- A-globe: Agent Development Platform with Inaccessibility and Mobility Support.- Supporting Agent Development in Erlang through the eXAT Platform.- Living Systems(R) Technology Suite.- Multi Agent System Development Kit.- An Integrated Development Environment for Electronic Institutions.- Jadex: A BDI-Agent System Combining Middleware and Reasoning.- Component Agent Framework for Non-Experts (CAFnE) Toolkit.- The WSDL2Agent Tool.- WS2JADE: A Tool for Run-time Deployment and Control of Web Services as JADE Agent Services.- A System for Analysis of Multi-Issue Negotiation.- FuzzyMAN: An Agent-based E-Marketplace with a Voice and Mobile User Interface.- Efficient Agent Communication in Wireless Environments.- AMETAS - the Asynchronous MEssage Transfer Agent System.- Tracy: An Extensible Plugin-Oriented Software Architecture for Mobile Agent Toolkits.- The Packet-World: A Test Bed for Investigating Situated Multi-Agent Systems.- Decommitment in a Competitive Multi-Agent Transportation Setting.- TeamWorker: An Agent-Based Support System for Mobile Task Execution. Multi-agent systems (MAS) are a special kind of distributed systems in which the main entities are autonomous in a proactive sense. These systems are special distributed systems because of their complexity and hence their unpredictability. Agents can spontaneously engage in complex interactions, guided by their own goals and intentions. When developing such kinds of system, there are many problems the developer has to face. All these problems make it virtually impossible to totally debug a quite complex multi-agent system (i.e. a MAS in which hundreds or even thousands of agents are involved). In this article we present a debugging tool we have developed for the JADE agents platform. Hence, it is a FIPA technology based tool and seeks to alleviate typical debugging problems derived from distribution and unpredictability. INTRODUCTION A space mission operations system is a complex network of human organizations, information and deepspace network systems and spacecraft hardware. As in other organizations, one of the problems in mission operations is managing the relationship of the mission information systems related to how people actually work (practices). Brahms, a multi-agent modeling and simulation tool, was used to model and simulate NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission work practice. The objective was to investigate the value of work practice modeling for mission operations design. From spring 2002 until winter 2003, a Brahms modeler participated in mission systems design sessions and operations testing for the MER mission held at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He observed how designers interacted with the Brahms tool. This paper discusses mission system designers’ reactions to the simulation output during model validation and the presentation of generated work procedures. This project spurred JPL’s interest in the Brahms model, but it was never included as part of the formal mission design process. We discuss why this occurred. Subsequently, we used the MER model to develop a future mission operations concept. Team members were reluctant to use the MER model, even though it appeared to be highly relevant to their effort. We describe some of the tool issues we encountered.