Externalisation and Internalization: A New Perspective on Agent Modularisation in Multi-Agent System Programming

Agent modularisation is a main issue in agent and multi- agent system programming. Existing solutions typically propose con- structs such as capabilities to group and encapsulate in well-defined mod- ules inside the agent different kinds of agent features, that depend on the architecture or model adopted—examples are goals, beliefs, inten- tions, skills. In this paper we introduce a further perspective, which can be considered complimentary to existing approaches, which accounts for externalizing some of such functionalities into the computational envi- ronment where agents are (logically) situated. This leads to some benefits in terms of reusability, dynamic extensibility and openness. To this end, we exploit artifact-based computational environments as introduced by the A&A meta-model and implemented in CArtAgO technology: agent modules are realised as suitably designed artifacts that agents can dy- namically exploit as external tools to enhance their action repertoire and – more generally – their capability to execute tasks. Then, to let agent (and agent programmers) exploit such capabilities abstracting from the low-level mechanics of artifact management and use, we exploit the dual notion of internalization, which consists in dynamically consulting and automatically embedding high-level usage protocols described in artifact manuals as agent plans. The idea is discussed providing some practi- cal examples of use, based on CArtAgO as technology for programming artifacts and Jason agent platform to program the agents.