HOMAGE: a heterogeneous object-based environment to develop multi-agent systems

This paper presents an object based programming environment, called HOMAGE, for the development of multiagent systems. This environment offers two different programming levels: object and agent. The object level allows the development of agent models and systems on the basis of two traditional object-oriented programming languages (i.e. C++ and Common Lisp). The agent level allows to specialize the agent models defined at the object level and to develop real multi-agent systems through a multi-agent oriented language, called MAPL++. Moreover, this environment offers a set of communication and distribution libraries to distribute a system on the Internet and to allow the communication between agents through different protocols. The paper includes a brief description of some personal assistants that have been implemented during experimentation with this environment