A Comparative Study in Java-based Development Platforms for Multi-Agent Systems

摘要

There are many Java-based platforms designed for building Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). However, there are few comprehensive evaluations to those platforms to help developer select the appropriate one and to figures out advantages and disadvantages for platform development teams. The study compares three of the current prominent and prevalent MAS platforms (JADE, FIPA-OS and ZEUS) on FIPA specification compliancy, platform maturity and nontechnical concerns in the form of tables. The study then discusses the result acquired from the comparison. The study figure out that JADE is better platform than the other two platforms and it is necessary to adopting XML to alleviate interaction problems of MAS. The study also proposes to extend the range of applicability of the agent, to incorporate Web Services as integration technology, to introduce agent oriented software engineering. At the end of the article, several routes are recommended for the future development of the platforms.