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Agent Breadth in a Tool for Distributed Multi-Agent System Development

Physical multi-agent systems display many interesting phenomena, an understanding of which holds the potential for valuable advances in many fields. Studying the emergent phenomena displayed by the interactions of physically mobile agents in flocks and herds have the potential to revolutionize everything from the study of animal behaviour to the design of road systems to encourage particular traffic patterns. These same phenomena influence the design and development of mobile software agents used for applications as diverse as mail sorting and ecommerce. The study of these systems, however, demands sophisticated tools for the development and support of these agents in software environments. This is inherent in the nature of mobile or immobile agents that exist purely in software domains (e-commerce agents, for example). However, software environments for development and examination of physical mobile agents are also a necessity, especially for projects of any scale. Most research using physical agents for experimentation examines only a very small number of agents because of the cost and support required, and so even those who insist that intelligent agent research requires the physical embodiment of agents employ simulation as an integral component of the design of those agents (e.g. [Balch, 1998a]). Moreover, such software environments for examining and developing intelligent mobile and immobile agents have also been shown to contribute significantly to the overall robustness of large scale systems, allowing developer to analyze potential problems and explore the consequences of changes [Amin, 2000]. Software tools for the support of multi-agent systems also provide an important element of control for the purposes of experimentation [Hanks et al., 1993], as well as solutions to problems in the real world that are beyond the capabilities of current AI technology, allowing research one area to proceed despite the immaturity of research in related areas [Anderson, 1995].