A Review of Platforms for the Development of Agent Systems

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of existing agent platforms, highlighting their features, development status, and suitability for different applications to aid researchers and developers.

Contribution

It offers an up-to-date, detailed overview and historical perspective of agent platforms, including classifications and links to specific projects, serving as a valuable reference.

Findings

Many agent platforms have been developed over thirty years.

Some platforms are abandoned, others are actively maintained.

Platforms are classified into general purpose and specialized types.

Abstract

Agent-based computing is an active field of research with the goal of building autonomous software of hardware entities. This task is often facilitated by the use of dedicated, specialized frameworks. For almost thirty years, many such agent platforms have been developed. Meanwhile, some of them have been abandoned, others continue their development and new platforms are released. This paper presents a up-to-date review of the existing agent platforms and also a historical perspective of this domain. It aims to serve as a reference point for people interested in developing agent systems. This work details the main characteristics of the included agent platforms, together with links to specific projects where they have been used. It distinguishes between the active platforms and those no longer under development or with unclear status. It also classifies the agent platforms as general purpose ones, free or commercial, and specialized ones, which can be used for particular types of applications.