From Multi-Agent Programming to Object Oriented Design Patterns

Various agent-based programming languages and frameworks have been proposed to support the development of multi-agent systems. They have contributed to the identification and operationalisation of multi-agent system concepts, features and abstractions by proposing specific programming constructs. Unfortunately, these contributions have not yet been widely adopted by industry. In this paper, we follow the argument that multi-agent programming technology can find its way to industry by introducing design patterns for the existing agent constructs in standard software technology. We provide some object-oriented design patterns based on the programming constructs that have been developed in agent-based programming languages.