Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology and Engineering Emergence Systems

Speaker:	Professor Hong ZHU
		Department of Computing
		Oxford Brookes University
		UK

Title:		"Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology
		 and Engineering Emergence Systems"

Date:		Thursday, 21 June 2007

Time:		3:00pm-4:00pm

Venue:		Room 3501 (via lift nos. 25/26), HKUST

Abstract:

With the rapid development of the Internet and Web technology towards a
computation platform, more and more software systems adopt multi-agent
systems (MAS) and self-organisation technologies to deal with the
complexity of dynamic environment. Emergent behaviours of such systems
become a key feature, but their development is extremely difficult due to
the lack of systematic methodology and tool support. This talk reports our
recent work in caste-centric agent-oriented software development
methodology with focus on the integration of formal and experimental
approaches to the engineering of emergent systems. In this method, a MAS
is modelled in a graphic modelling language using an automated modelling
environment, then specified in a formal specification language SLABS,
which could be generated from the models. Its required emergence
properties are then specified and analysed using a formal system called
Scenario Calculus. Meanwhile, the dynamic behaviour of the system is
observed by repeated experiments using multi-agent simulation techniques,
which could be programmed in an agent-oriented programming language, to
understand the emergence phenomena. Observed phenomena in simulations can
provide the insight for theoretical analysis, and confirm or disprove the
hypothesis of the theoretical study. Our preliminary research shows that
while formal proofs can give the guarantee of the properties of the
emergence phenomena, experimental study can provide empirical knowledge
and discover unknown and unexpected behaviours and properties.
Perspectives on future development will also be discussed.

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Biography:

Dr. Hong ZHU is a professor of computer science at Oxford Brookes
University, where he chairs the applied formal methods group. Prof. ZHU
obtained his BSc, MSc, PhD degrees in Computer Science from Nanjing
University, China, in 1982, 1984 and 1987, respectively. He was with
Nanjing University after obtained his PhD degree in Sept. 1987. From
October 1990 to December 1994, he was a research fellow at Brunel
University and the Open University, UK. He returned to Nanjing University
in Dec. 1994 and joined Department of Computing of Oxford Brookes
University in November 1998.

Prof. ZHU's research interests are in the area of software engineering
including software development methodology, software testing, agent
technology, automated software development tools, etc. He has published
more than one hundred research papers and two books. He has won a number
of prizes in China for his research achievements, which include the
Premier's Award of Distinguished Young Scientists in China awarded by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China in 1997 and Ho YingDong Prize
of Research Achievement (second prize) awarded by Ho YingDong Foundation
of the Ministry of Education of China in 1992, and Cheung Kong Scholar
Professorship of the Ministry of Education of China in 2000.