Specifying agent behaviors with UML statecharts and StatEdit

Abstract

The use of agents and multiagent systems is widespread in computer science nowadays. Thus the need for methods to specify agents in a clear and simple manner arises. One way of achieving this is by means of a graphical formalism. For using such a formalism the availability of tools, that support a developer, is of great importance. In this paper we present an approach to specifying agent behaviors on different levels of abstraction with the help of UML statecharts. Cooperation between different agents can explicitly be modeled. To help a developer with applying this formalism to the specification of agent behaviors the statechart editor StatEdit is presented. This development tool supports not only the modelling of an agent but a simple form of code generation as well.