This paper describes an autonomy-based multi-agent system and its application to simulations in the framework of collective robotics. Experimental results measured for a particular task, namely object regrouping, have two outcomes. First, they show that a form of implicit cooperation takes place in the system despite the absence of explicit cooperation protocol, but just in virtue of the design...

We provide an assessment of the status of empirical software research by analyzing all refereed articles that appeared in the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering from its first issue in January 1996 through June 2006. The journal publishes empirical software research exclusively and it is the only journal to do so. The main findings are: 1. The dominant empirical methods are experiments a...

The field of knowledge known as Empirical Software Engineering suggests the application of experimental methods in order to discover and describe characteristics of the process and results derived from new methodologies, such as agile formal methods. In this paper we present the methodology needed for conducting formal experiments and we review related work done in the field of the agile formal...

In k 2 experimental design, the classical fractional factorial designs, the Plackett-Burman designs and the Taguchi orthogonal-array designs all require, with few exceptions, n 2 test conditions, for some k n ≤ . Tsao and Wibowo (2005) pointed out that when only m of the k 2 effects/interactions are non-zero, only m test conditions are required for their estimation. Given the identities of m pr...