JADE-FSM-Engine: A Deployment Tool for Flexible Agent Behaviours in JADE

Multiagent systems (MAS) are a promising software development paradigm for complex and dynamic application domains. However, building effective MAS software requires models, mechanisms and tools that support the flexible and precise specification and implementation of MAS, specifically agent behaviours. MAS should be designed highly flexible capable of adapting to changes in their environment and user needs. JADE platform provides limited support for constructing and coordinating complex agent behaviours by employing the FSM model. Our experiences motivated us to build the JADE-FSM-Engine as a JADE add-on, extending and augmenting the native JADE FSM Behaviour. This add-on enables easy runtime configuration and reconfiguration of JADE agents, improving flexibility and adaptability of MAS implementations. A simple example illustrates this flexibility.