The Emergence of Multiagent System Software Engineering

Many of the features of multiagent systems (MAS) are now being used in the development of large industrial and business systems that involve hundreds, or even thousands of agents. Thus, there is an urgent need for software engineering techniques for MAS-based systems that guide the processes of design, development and maintenance. Without adequate processes and techniques such systems will not be sufficiently dependable, robust, trustworthy nor easily extended. This paper discusses the sub-areas of MAS Software Engineering research and development that have been focus of our research group in the software engineering laboratory (LES) at PUC-Rio. We give examples of relevant results and present a subset of the extensive literature the group has produced during the last decade. We also report how we managed to face the challenges that emerged from our research by organizing and developing a research community at the intersection of software engineering, programming and MASs with a concern for scalability of solutions.