MAS Development: Reusing through Agent Oriented Design Patterns

Capitalising and diffusing experience about multiagent systems are two key mechanisms the classical approach of methods and tools can’t address. Our hypothesis is that, among available techniques that collect and formalise experience, design patterns are the most able technique allowing to express the agent concepts and to adapt itself to the various MAS developing problems. In this paper, we present several agent oriented patterns in order to demonstrate the feasibility of helping MAS analysis and design through design patterns. Our agent patterns cover all the development stages, from analysis to implementation, including re-engineering (through antipatterns).