The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT)

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Towards Automated Testing of Multi-Agent Systems Using Prometheus Design Models

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are used for a wide range of applications. Goals and plans are the key premise to achieve MAS targets. Correct and proper execution and coverage of plans and achievement of goals ensures confidence in MAS. Proper identification of all possible faults in MAS working plays its role towards gaining such confidence. In this paper, we devise a model based approach which ensures goals and plans coverage. A Fault model has been defined covering faults in MAS related to goal and plan execution and interactions. We have created a test model using Prometheus design artifacts, i.e., Goal overview diagram, Scenario overview, Agent and Capability overview diagrams. New coverage criteria have been defined for fault identification. Test Paths have been identified from test model. Test cases have been generated from test paths. Our technique is then evaluated on actual implementation of MAS in JACK Intelligent Agents is a framework in Java for multi-agent system development (JACK) by executing more than 100 different test cases. Code has been instrumented for coverage analysis and faults have been injected in MAS. This approach successfully finds the injected faults by applying test cases for coverage criteria paths on MAS execution. ‘Goal plan coverage’ criterion has been more effective with respect to fault detection while scenario, capability and agent coverage criteria have relatively less scope in fault identification.


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[23] Zhou Y., Torre L., and Zhang Y., “Partial Goal Satisfaction and Goal Change: Weak and Strong Partial Implication, Logical Properties, Complexity,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Estoril, pp. 413- 420, 2008. Towards Automated Testing of Multi-Agent Systems Using Prometheus Design Models 65 Shafiq Ur Rehman is PhD (CS) candidate at Capital University of Science and Technology, Islambad. He is member of Center for Software Dependability research group. His research focuses on software quality assurance and testing, spcifically model based testing of multi-agent systems. In this research area he has published journals and conferences papers as well. Besides his research activities he is working as a software test engineer as well. Aamer Nadeem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Capital University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. He is also Head of the Center for Software Dependability - a research group working in the areas of software reliability, software fault tolerance, formal methods and safety-critical systems. He received his MSc in computer science from QAU, MS in software engineering from NUST, and PhD from Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad. He did part of his PhD research work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) under a research collaboration. He is a professional member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Muddassar Sindhu received his PhD from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. His research interests include software testing, learning- based testing, formal methods and formalization of informal software requirements.