ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some guidelines for practitioners to follow during prototype design and implementation. The design of the agent architecture is a key step in developing a multi-agent system. Like traditional software development, the development of an agent-based system should have the four phases of Analysis, Design, Implementation and Test. Similar guidelines to good practice in agent system development have also been formalized, as “agent design patterns”. A traditional object-oriented programming language may be used when implementing a simple proof-of-concept prototype. The testing and debugging of a multi-agent system requires significant effort, because even when individual agents in a multi-agent system are “correct”, the overall system behavior might be different from expectation. The chapter considers the selection of standards for data and knowledge exchange in agent-based concurrent design and manufacturing systems. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
