Fantastic MASs and Where to Find Them: First Results and Lesson Learned

Daniela Briola, Angelo Ferrando, Viviana Mascardi

Abstract: Nowadays, the Multiagent Systems research community is facing new challenges related to engineering the overall process of software development, tailoring it to the specific needs of the community, and integrating SE techniques into many studies in the MAS area. More and more frequently, researchers need already developed MASs for validating their new proposals. Often, they spend time in looking for the code of existing tools to compare with the state of the art. Unfortunately, accessing this kind of resources, which are the starting point for many SE activities, is not always easy. In this paper, we present the first outcome of the initiative “Fantastic MAS and where to find them”, launched in June 2022, where we asked the agent community to contribute in the creation of a repository to facilitate the sharing of the already existing tools (agent development frameworks, libraries, add ons of already existing platforms) and MASs with their code. The “Fantastic MAS” goals are to i) improve the sharing and reusing of research results ii) support the SE activities in our research community, iii) help making a step towards the Open Science movement, which has been already widely adopted in other research communities. Besides providing an overview of the submissions we got, we discuss the open problems that emerged in these eight months of the initiative, so that to stimulate the discussion in the community.