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Evaluation of the Zeus MAS Framework
Fonseca, Steven P.; Griss, Martin L.; Letsinger, Reed
HPL-2001-154
Keyword(s): e-commerce; multi-agent systems; Zeus
Abstract: Advances in agent technology depend on improving frameworks for building and supporting agent societies. Experience suggests that first generation multi-agent systems fall short of providing a rapid prototyping development environment for the systematic construction and deployment of agent-oriented applications. While at least sixty [1] different agent systems have been implemented, few efforts have been made to use them as case studies for building second- generation multi-agent systems. We propose a refactoring of both architecture and implementation across multiple well-know open-source agent frameworks to produce a new multi-agent system (MAS) framework called MAS2. The first step in building MAS2 is the evaluation of several agent frameworks. The focus of this paper is to collect reusable abstractions from the Zeus MAS that support plug-and-play agent infrastructure and behavior, agent interoperability, building a generic MAS core, and a MAS interface allowing domain specific extensions. The Zeus MAS framework was critiqued by implementing an e-commerce agent society. Notes: To be published in and presented at the Second International Workshop on Software Agents and Workflows for Systems Interoperability
8 Pages
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