Monitoring open multi-agent systems: An aspect-oriented programming based approach

In Open Multi-Agent Systems (Open MAS), no central authority can control all the agents. The agents share some features like: heterogeneity, different aims and objectives, autonomy, self-interested that conflicts individual goals and limited trust. Also, agents, in Open MAS, can enter and leave a system at any time. In order to ensure that the system carries out its goals, it must be observed and controlled. For that, it is necessary to define monitoring mechanisms for: (1) understanding and analyzing the system behavior, and (2) helping developers to review and examine, at run-time, agents' communications and other different events (agents' life-cycle, agent requested roles, performed actions by a given agent, etc.) generated during the system execution. In this paper, an AOP-based approach for monitoring Open MAS is proposed. The proposed approach is supported by RT-MTOMAS (Real-Time Monitoring Tool for Open Multi-Agent Systems), a new tool we developed for dealing with Open MAS monitoring issues. RT-MTOMAS provides, also, a behavioral model in order to illustrate agents' interactions. The developed tool is illustrated through a concrete case study. We outlined its integration with MaDKit agent platform.