A development and test environment for agent-based telematic services

We describe an agent development environment which is suited to the realization of complex, cooperative telematic services. We implemented a powerful component-based agent architecture which provides asynchronous concurrent execution, reactivity and basic reasoning capabilities, as well as sophisticated local coordination. Service specific requirements comprising the accounting and monitoring of consumed time, costs, and quality parameters are also integrated. The particular capabilities of an agent are characterized by executable scripts, intentionality structures, KQML-based communication facilities, and cooperation protocols. Knowledge acquisition and maintenance tools support the programming of agents. These tools are integrated in an agent builder shell which additionally provides means for defining user interfaces and distributing agents among a network. Tools for monitoring and debugging single agents as well as multi agent scenarios complete the agent development environment. We further describe two applications one from the domain of Intelligent Networks, the other being a distributed, cooperative solution to a complex diagnosis task - that we've built with our tools.