Danny Weyns | Linnaeus University (original) (raw)

Papers by Danny Weyns

Engineering multi-agent systems: state of affairs and the road ahead

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 2019

The continuous integration of software-intensive systems together with the ever-increasing comput... more The continuous integration of software-intensive systems together with the ever-increasing computing power offer a breeding ground for intelligent agents and multi-agent systems (MAS) more than ever before. Over the past two decades, a wide variety of languages, models, techniques and methodologies have been proposed to engineer agents and MAS. Despite this substantial body of knowledge and expertise, the systematic engineering of large-scale and open MAS still poses many challenges. Researchers and engineers still face fundamental questions regarding theories, architectures, languages, processes, and platforms for designing, implementing, running, maintaining, and evolving MAS. This paper reports on the results of the 6th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2018, 14th-15th of July, 2018, Stockholm, Sweden), where participants discussed the issues above focusing on the state of affairs and the road ahead for researchers and engineers in this area.

Variability and Complexity in Software Design: Towards Quality through Modeling and Testing

Today's software systems must accommodate a wide range of usage and deployment scenarios. The inc... more Today's software systems must accommodate a wide range of usage and deployment scenarios. The increasing size and heterogeneity of software-intensive systems, dynamic and critical operating conditions, fast moving and highly competitive markets, and increasingly powerful and versatile hardware makes it more and more difficult to handle the additional complexity in design caused by variability. This paper reports results of the Second International Workshop on Variability and Complexity in Software Design. It also outlines directions the field might move in the future.

The concept of variability is fundamental in software product lines and a successful implementati... more The concept of variability is fundamental in software product lines and a successful implementation of a product line largely depends on how well domain requirements and their variability are specified, managed, and realized. While developing an educational software product line, we identified a lack of support to specify variability in quality concerns. To address this problem we propose an approach to model variability in quality concerns, which is an extension of quality attribute scenarios. In particular, we propose domain quality attribute scenarios, which extend standard quality attribute scenarios with additional information to support specification of variability and deriving product specific scenarios. We demonstrate the approach with scenarios for robustness and upgradability requirements in the educational software product line.

Rigorous Architectural Reasoning for Self-Adaptive Software Systems

2016 Qualitative Reasoning about Software Architectures (QRASA), 2016

Engineering Environment-Mediated Multi-Agent Systems, International Workshop, EEMMAS 2007, Dresden, Germany, October 5, 2007. Selected Revised and Invited Papers

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Engine... more This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Engineering Environment-Mediated Multi-Agent Systems, EEMMAS 2007, held in Dresden, Germany, in October 2007, in conjunction with ECCS 2007, the European Conference on Complex Systems The volume includes 16 thoroughly revised papers, selected from the lectures given at the workshop, together with 2 papers resulting from invited talks by prominent researchers in the field. The papers are organized in sections on engineering ...

2014 IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, 2014

ABSTRACT Every software program that interacts with a user requires a user interface. Model-View-... more ABSTRACT Every software program that interacts with a user requires a user interface. Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a common design pattern to integrate a user interface with the application domain logic. MVC separates the representation of the application domain (Model) from the display of the application's state (View) and user interaction control (Controller). However, studying the literature reveals that a variety of other related patterns exists, which we denote with Model-View- (MV) design patterns. This paper discusses existing MV patterns classified in three main families: Model-View-Controller (MVC), Model-View-View Model (MVVM), and Model-View-Presenter (MVP). We take a practitioners' point of view and emphasize the essentials of each family as well as the differences. The study shows that the selection of patterns should take into account the use cases and quality requirements at hand, and chosen technology. We illustrate the selection of a pattern with an example of our practice. The study results aim to bring more clarity in the variety of MV design patterns and help practitioners to make better grounded decisions when selecting patterns.

Architecture-Based Design of Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems th... more Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems that are decentralized, can deal flexibly with dynamic conditions, and are open to system components that come and go. This is why they are used in domains such as manufacturing control, automated vehicles, and e-commerce markets. Danny Weyns&#x27; book is organized according to the postulate that&quot; developing multi-agent systems is 95% software engineering and 5% multi-agent systems theory.&quot; He presents a software engineering ...

MATES@ Net. ObjectDays

KI-Zeitschrift Künstliche Intelligenz, 2004

Associatie KULeuven. ...

Environments for multi-agent systems III (Lecture notes in computer science, Vol. 4389)

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Worksho... more This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Environments for Multiagent Systems, E4MAS 2006, held in Hakodate, Japan in May 2006 as an associated event of AAMAS 2006, the 5th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. The 15 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from the lectures given at the workshop completed by a number of invited papers of prominent researchers active in the domain. The papers are ...

Proceedings of the 15th International …, Jan 1, 2011

We describe ongoing work in knowledge evolution management for autonomic software product lines. ... more We describe ongoing work in knowledge evolution management for autonomic software product lines. We explore how an autonomic product line may benefit from new knowledge originating from different source activities and artifacts at run time. The motivation for sharing run-time knowledge is that products may self-optimize at run time and thus improve quality faster compared to traditional software product line evolution. We propose two mechanisms that support knowledge evolution in product lines: online learning and knowledge sharing. We describe two basic scenarios for runtime knowledge evolution that involves these mechanisms. We evaluate online learning and knowledge sharing in a small product line setting that shows promising results.

Egemin N.V. is a Belgian manufacturer of Automatic Guided Vehicles -named E'GVs-and control softw... more Egemin N.V. is a Belgian manufacturer of Automatic Guided Vehicles -named E'GVs-and control software for automating logistics services in warehouses and manufactories using E'GVs. In a joint R&D project, Egemin and the AgentWise research group are developing an innovative version of the E'GVs control system aimed to cope with new and future system requirements such as flexibility and openness.

A Formal Model for Situated Multi-Agent Systems

Fundamenta Informaticae, 2004

It is generally accepted that the environment is an essential compound of multiagent systems (MAS... more It is generally accepted that the environment is an essential compound of multiagent systems (MASs). Yet the environment is typically assigned limited responsibilities, or even neglected entirely, overlooking a rich potential for the paradigm of MASs. Opportunities that environments offer, have mostly been researched in the domain of situated MASs. However, the complex principles behind the concepts and responsibilities of the environment and the interplay between agents and environment are not yet fully clarified. In this paper, we first give an overview of the state-of-the-art on environments in MASs. The survey discusses relevant research tracks on environments that have been explored so far. Each track is illustrated with a number of representative contributions by the research community. Based on this study and the results of our own research, we identify a set of core concerns for environments that can be divided in two classes: concerns related to the structure of the environment, and concerns related to the activity in the environment. To conclude, we list a number of research challenges that, in our opinion, are important for further research on environments for MAS.

Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, 2007

The current practice in multiagent systems typically associates the environment with resources th... more The current practice in multiagent systems typically associates the environment with resources that are external to agents and their communication infrastructure. Advanced uses of the environment include infrastructures for indirect coordination, such as digital pheromones, or support for governed interaction in electronic institutions. Yet, in general, the notion of environment is not well defined. Functionalities of the environment are often dealt with implicitly or in an ad hoc manner. This is not only poor engineering practice, it also hinders engineers to exploit the full potential of the environment in multiagent systems. In this paper, we put forward the environment as an explicit part of multiagent systems.We give a definition stating that the environment in a multiagent system is a first-class abstraction with dual roles: (1) the environment provides the surrounding conditions for agents to exist, which implies that the environment is an essential part of every multiagent system, and (2) the environment provides an exploitable design abstraction for building multiagent system applications. We discuss the responsibilities of such an environment in multiagent systems and we present a reference model for the environment that can serve as a basis for environment engineering. To illustrate the power of the environment as a design abstraction, we show how the environment is successfully exploited in a real world application. Considering the environment as a first-class abstraction in multiagent systems opens up new horizons for research and development in multiagent systems.

It is commonly agreed that a self-adaptive software system is one that can modify itself at run-t... more It is commonly agreed that a self-adaptive software system is one that can modify itself at run-time due to changes in the system, its requirements, or the environment in which it is deployed. A cursory review of the software engineering literature attests to the wide spectrum of software systems that are described as self-adaptive. The way self-adaptation is conceived depends on various aspects, such as the users' requirements, the particular properties of a system, and the characteristics of the environment.

Organizations are at the heart of multi-agent systems. To deal with the ongoing dynamics and chan... more Organizations are at the heart of multi-agent systems. To deal with the ongoing dynamics and changes in the system, organizations have to adapt. Typically, agents are responsible to deal with the complexity of organization dynamics. In this paper, we present an approach for context-driven dynamic organizations in which the agent environment takes the burden of managing organization dynamics.

Abstract In this work, the experiences with the proposed communication protocol DynCNET are repor... more Abstract In this work, the experiences with the proposed communication protocol DynCNET are reported. The idea of the communication protocol is based on the different states and actions an agent has to accomplish during his tasks. All the states are in a scheme: the statemachine. First, using XML, the statemachines are interpreted by the program. Second, the AGV agents and Transport agents are constructed with their own statemachine and integrated in the simulator. Finally the behaviour of the agents is implemented.

Abstract Traditional architectures for situated, behavior-based agents take the viewpoint of the ... more Abstract Traditional architectures for situated, behavior-based agents take the viewpoint of the individual agent to select the most appropriate action. Action selection is typically based on internal stimuli and stimuli from the agent's neighboring environment. As such collaborations between agents have to emerge from the individually selected actions of the agents. In this paper we study the research problem of how to enable explicit collaborations between situated agents.