A Concise Overview of Software Agent Research, Modeling, and Development

Abstract

Software agent technology has been intensively explored in the past three decades. It is explicitly or implicitly applied in many systems. Software agent research covers a wide range of area which makes it challenging for new researchers to comprehend the peculiarities and complexities of the technology. Consequently, this paper provides a concise overview of software agent research, modeling, and development. It summarizes and analyzes more than 100 sources of publication including research papers, articles, and books. The aim of the paper is to provide a quick start to new researchers in software agent and multi-agent systems. The paper offers the following contributions: (1) it determines the milestone achievements of software agent conceptualization, modeling and development platforms, (2) it defines the related terminologies of the field and reveals their redundancies, (3) it summarizes the multi-agent systems technology and finally, (4) it explores the current active research topics in software agent and multi-agent systems.