SADE: A Development Environment for Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

This paper presents SADE, a software supporting environment for developing and running self-adaptive multi-agent systems (MAS). SADE consists of four parts: an adaptive mechanism, a programming language SADL, a reusable software package and supporting software tools. The adaptive mechanism is based on the organization metaphor to analyze and implement self-adaptation of MAS. In our approach, self-adaptation of agent is realized as the changes of roles that agent plays in MAS organization by executing four atomic adaptation operations: “join”, “quit”, “activate” and “deactivate”. SADL is presented to describe the adaptive strategies that express how agents in MAS adapt to the changes of the situated environment. It enables developers to describe self-adaptation explicitly and separate the functional behaviors from adaptation behaviors of agents, thus simplifying the development and maintenance of complex adaptive MAS. SADE also provides a reusable software package that encapsulates the elementary functionalities of self-adaptation, such as the adaptive mechanism, etc. In order to support the development, deployment and execution of adaptive MAS, a compiler and editor for SADL, the architecture of self-adaptive agent and its execution engine have been developed. The technical details of SADE are introduced and a case is studied to illustrate our approach.