A Study of Some Multi-agent Meta-models

Several agent-oriented methodologies have been proposed over the last few years. Unlike the object-oriented domain and unfortunately for designers, most of the time, each methodology has its own purposes and few standardization works have been done yet, limiting the impact of agent design on the industrial world. By studying three existing methodologies – ADELFE, Gaia and PASSI – and the concepts related to them, this paper tries to find a means to unify their meta-models. Comparing a certain number of features at the agent or system level (such as the agent structure, its society or organization, its interactions capacities or how agents may be implemented) has enabled us to draw up a first version of a unified meta-model proposed as a first step toward interoperability between agent-oriented methodologies.