Modelling a society of simple agents: From conceptual specification to experimentation

Much research concerning the design of multi-agent systems (at a conceptual level) addresses complex agents that exhibit complex interaction patterns. Due to this complexity, it is difficult to perform rigorous experimentatio n. On the other hand, systematic experimental work regarding behaviour of s ocieties of more simple agents, while reporting valuable results, often lac ks conceptual specification of the system under consideration. In this pape r, the compositional multi-agent modelling framework DESIRE is not only suc cessfully used to develop a conceptual specification of the simple agents d iscussed by A. Cesta, M. Miceli and P. Rizzo (Lecture Notes in Artificial I ntelligence, vol. 1038, Springer-Verlag: Berlin, pp. 128-138, 1996), but al so to simulate the behaviour in a dynamical environment. In the DESIRE fram ework, a conceptual specification, which provides a high-level view of an a gent, has enough detail for automatic prototype generation. The prototype i mplementation of the conceptual specification of the simple agents has been used to replicate, and extend, one of the experiments reported by Cesta et al.