Publications

@inproceedings{cossentinoEngineeringSelfadaptiveSystems2019,

title = {Engineering Self-adaptive Systems: From Experiences with MUSA to a General Design Process},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Luca Sabatucci and Valeria Seidita},

doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-25693-7_6},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-01-01},

booktitle = {Engineering Multi-Agent Systems: 6th International Workshop, EMAS 2018, Stockholm, Sweden, July 14-15, 2018, Revised Selected Papers 6},

pages = {96--116},

publisher = {Springer International Publishing},

abstract = {Designing and developing complex self-adaptive systems require design processes having specific features fitting and representing the complexity of these systems. Changing requirements, users' needs and dynamic environment have to be taken in consideration, also con- sidering that, due of the self-adaptive nature of the system, the solution is not fixed at design time but it is a run-time outcome. Traditional design approach and life cycles are not suitable to design software sys- tems where requirements continuously change at runtime. A new design process paradigm is needed to design such systems. In this Chapter, we present a retrospective analysis based on three projects developed in the last five years with the middleware MUSA in order to identify specific features of the design process for supporting continuous change and self-adaptation. The result is a general approach allowing to reduce the gap between design time and run-time.},

keywords = {Continuous change, Design Process, Retrospective analysis, Self-Adaptive Systems},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{cossentinoGIMTToolOntology2014,

title = {GIMT: A Tool for Ontology and Goal Modeling in BDI Multi-Agent Design},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Daniele Dalle Nogare and Raffaele Giancarlo and Carmelo Lodato and Salvatore Lopes and Patrizia Ribino and Luca Sabatucci and Valeria Seidita},

year  = {2014},

date = {2014-01-01},

booktitle = {WOA 2014, Catania, Italy, Sept. 25-26},

volume = {1260},

publisher = {CEUR},

abstract = {Designing and developing BDI multi-agent systems would be facilitated by rising up the level of abstraction to use and by a methodological approach for managing it. To this aim it is common the integration of goal oriented analysis techniques with the design and implementation phases. In this fashion, our experience is that the use of an ontology in the early stages of the process is a great support for subsequent phases: goal modeling, agent design and implementation. However, we are aware that building and maintaining an ontology has to be supported by appropriate tools. This paper proposes GIMT (Goal Identification and Modeling Tool) as a further step towards the creation of a complete methodological approach for developing multi-agent systems to be implemented in the JACAMO framework. GIMT is a CASE tool for supporting ontology building and goal modeling. Besides the advantages offered by an automatic tool, the other novelty of this research is in the mapping between metamodeling based on Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs) with the Eclipse plug-in development environment.},

keywords = {Design Process, Multi agent systems, Semantic layer},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{leonardiDesignInterculturalDialogue2011,

title = {Design as Intercultural Dialogue: Coupling Human-Centered Design with Requirement Engineering Methods},

author = { Chiara Leonardi and Luca Sabatucci and Angelo Susi and Massimo Zancanaro},

doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-23765-2_34},

year  = {2011},

date = {2011-01-01},

booktitle = {Human-Computer Interaction–INTERACT 2011: 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011, Proceedings, Part III 13},

pages = {485--502},

publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},

abstract = {In the design of information technologies, the challenge of integrating a human-centered design approach with software engineering methods emerge in different forms. The main challenge is to set the ground for different disciplines and professional cultures communicate and work together. The orchestration of different contributions and the establishment of communication practices that facilitates the integration of the different languages and procedures are crucial steps to take full advantage of different research traditions. This paper presents a case study in which human-centered design and requirement engineering methodologies have been used within a large research projects aiming at developing innovative technologies and services to support professionals in nursing homes. The design process took the form of an intercultural dialogue that required human-centered and requirement-engineering professionals to work across borders. Starting from our case study, the paper presents the boundaries identified between the human-centered and the engineering perspective and proposes a framework to guide the integration process conceived as an intercultural dialogue between disciplines.},

keywords = {AAL for the Elderly, Design Process, Requirement Engineering, User-Centred Design},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{sabatucciIssuesChallengesCoupling2011,

title = {Issues and Challenges in Coupling Tropos with User-Centred Design.},

author = { Luca Sabatucci and Chiara Leonardi and Angelo Susi and Massimo Zancanaro},

year  = {2011},

date = {2011-01-01},

booktitle = {iStar},

pages = {120--125},

abstract = {Goal-oriented requirements engineering aims at eliciting, elab- orating, structuring, specifying, analyzing and documenting functional and non-functional requirements. This activity must include the involve- ment of final users of the system across the whole process to reduce the risk of misunderstanding the domain, missing important details and to in- crease the final value of the product. User-Centred Design is an approach that focuses on the continuous communication between requirements en- gineers and stakeholders, thus distributing responsibilities of the decision process about the requirements. In this paper we explore the issues and challenges of coupling User- Centred Design and Goal-Oriented methods as we experienced in a real project aiming at developing smart environment for nursing home to support medical and assistance staff.},

keywords = {AAL for the Elderly, Design Process, Goal-Oriented Approach, Requirement Engineering, User-Centred Design},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{difrancescomarinoBitPersonaBit2010,

title = {A Bit of" Persona", a Bit of" Goal", a Bit of" Process"... a Recipe for Analyzing User Intensive Software Systems.},

author = { Chiara Di Francescomarino and Chiara Leonardi and Alessandro Marchetto and Cu D. Nguyen and Nauman A. Qureshi and Luca Sabatucci and Anna Perini and Angelo Susi and Paolo Tonella and Massimo Zancanaro},

year  = {2010},

date = {2010-01-01},

booktitle = {iStar 2010 – Proceedings of the 4th International i* Workshop},

volume = {586},

pages = {36--40},

series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},

abstract = {The centrality of users in the design and development of complex systems, such as service-based applications, calls for new methodologies and techniques to extract and represent user needs and to translate them into real processes. In this short paper, we describe the integration of concepts and analysis techniques of different approaches, namely Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering, User-Centred Design and Process-Oriented Modeling, that are being developed in the context of two projects related to Ambient Assisted Living and Internet of Services.},

keywords = {AAL for the Elderly, Business Process, Design Process, Goal-Oriented Approach, Requirement Engineering},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{leonardiExploringBoundariesWhen2010,

title = {Exploring the Boundaries: When Method Fragmentation Is Not Convenient.},

author = { Chiara Leonardi and Luca Sabatucci and Angelo Susi and Massimo Zancanaro},

year  = {2010},

date = {2010-01-01},

booktitle = {MALLOW},

abstract = {This paper presents an approach to explore the coupling of User-Centred Design and Tropos methodologies. The two methodologies have been employed in a real project aiming at developing smart environment for nursing home to support medical and assistance staff. In particular Tropos has been used for modeling (and reason about) the domain and the system, whereas User-Centred Design has been useful for establishing an interface for communicating with stakeholders. The integration was challenging due to the epistemological differences between the two design approaches.},

keywords = {AAL for the Elderly, Design Process, Smart Environment, User-Centred Design},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{dimascioBuildingBrowsingTropos2009,

title = {Building and Browsing Tropos Models: The AVI Design},

author = { Tania Di Mascio and Anna Perini and Luca Sabatucci and Angelo Susi},

doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-02559-4_30},

year  = {2009},

date = {2009-01-01},

booktitle = {Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Interaction: Symposium on Human Interface 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, San Diego, CA, USA, July 19-24, 2009, Proceedings, Part II},

pages = {269},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {This paper proposes the use of the HCI paradigm and techniques to support software system designers in building and browsing visual models during the development of complex distributed systems. In particular, we adopt Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) to analyse the first version of the interface of TAOM4E, the tool supporting the Tropos Agent-Oriented methodology. Using the results of this usability study, we collect different requirements to design an Advanced Visual Interface (AVI) of TAOM4E taking into account requirements of supporting software designers during Tropos models design process browsing.},

keywords = {Agents, Design Process, Supporting Tool},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{sabatucciIntroducingMotivationsDesign2009,

title = {Introducing Motivations in Design Pattern Representation},

author = { Luca Sabatucci and Massimo Cossentino and Angelo Susi},

doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-04211-9_20},

year  = {2009},

date = {2009-01-01},

booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Software Reuse: Formal Foundations of Reuse and Domain Engineering},

pages = {210},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {Design pattern formalization is aimed at encouraging the use of design patterns during the design phase. Many approaches focuses on providing solutions with a graphical notation and complementary text, typically composed by a static and a dynamic definitions. The weak point is the lack of flexibility when customizing the generic solution to the specific context of use. This paper proposes a criterion to motivate design pattern selection and reuse. Designer is supported with a technique for balancing pattern and context forces for selecting among alternative implementations. The provided representation summarizes and organizes relevant information in the classical informal pattern documentation.},

keywords = {Design Patterns, Design Process, Goal-Oriented Approach},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{sabatucciSeparationConcernsRole2007,

title = {Separation of Concerns and Role Implementation in the Passi Design Process},

author = { Luca Sabatucci and Salvatore Gaglio},

doi = {10.1109/INDIN.2007.4384928},

year  = {2007},

date = {2007-01-01},

booktitle = {Industrial Informatics, 2007 5th IEEE International Conference On},

volume = {2},

abstract = {The use of design patterns proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors when producing software with the object-oriented paradigm. In previous works we engaged the production of a tool for the reuse of patterns for multi-agent systems. Now we are fronting a new problem: automatic code generation for agents, designed with a specific methodology, with the support of design patterns and using an aspect oriented approach. In this work we present our preliminary experiences in the identification, description, production and use of aspects for multi agent systems and a tool for code production.},

keywords = {Design Patterns, Design Process, Multi agent systems},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{cossentinoAgentOrientedTool2006,

title = {An Agent Oriented Tool for Method Engineering},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Luca Sabatucci and Valeria Seidita and Salvatore Gaglio},

year  = {2006},

date = {2006-01-01},

booktitle = {EUMAS},

abstract = {In the last years we applied the Method Engineering paradigm to the development of agent-oriented design processes. The main difficulty in our initial experiments was ensuring the support of a customised CASE tool to the new methodology. In this paper we now present a Computer-Aided Process Engineering (CAPE) tool that we developed in order to allow the design of the new process and then its instantiation. The process is executed as a workflow, the designer receives the help of an expert system (for routine works automation and syntax/semantic checks) and can model his/her system using a set of Eclipse plug-ins supporting all UML diagrams. The development of this tool started from the definition of a system metamodel obtained from the initial requirements and then instantiated using open-source and ad hoc developed components; as it could be expected relevant portions of this tool are developed using the agent-oriented paradigm.},

keywords = {Agents, Design Process, Situational Method Engineering, Supporting Tool},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{cossentinoPassiAgilePassi2005,

title = {The Passi and Agile Passi Mas Meta-Models Compared with a Unifying Proposal},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Salvatore Gaglio and Luca Sabatucci and Valeria Seidita},

doi = {10.1007/11559221_19},

year  = {2005},

date = {2005-01-01},

booktitle = {Multi-Agent Systems and Applications IV: 4th International Central and Eastern European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, CEEMAS 2005, Budapest, Hungary, September 15– 17, 2005. Proceedings 4},

pages = {183--192},

publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},

abstract = {A great number of processes for multi-agent systems design have been presented in last years to support the different approaches to agent-oriented design; each process is specific for a particular class of problems and it instantiates a specific MAS meta-model. These differences produce inconsistences and overlaps: a MAS meta-model may define a term not referred by another, or the same term can be used with a different meaning. We think that the lack of a standardization may cause a significant delay to the diffusion of the agent paradigm outside research context. Working for this unification goal, it is also necessary to define in unambiguous way the terms of the agent model and their relationships thus obtaining a unified MAS meta-model. In this work we propose the PASSI MAS meta-model, the results of its adaptation to the needs of an agile process (Agile PASSI), and a comparison with an existing unifying proposal of MAS meta-model composed by considering three different processes (ADELFE, Gaia and PASSI).},

keywords = {Agents, Agile Development, Design Process, Multi agent systems, Standardization},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{cossentinoPatternsReusePASSI2004,

title = {Patterns Reuse in the PASSI Methodology},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Luca Sabatucci and Antonio Chella},

doi = {10.1007/978-3-540-25946-6_19},

year  = {2004},

date = {2004-01-01},

booktitle = {Engineering Societies in the Agents World IV: 4th International Workshops, ESAW 2003, London, UK, October 29-31, 2003. Revised Selected and Invited Papers 4},

pages = {294--310},

publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},

abstract = {Design patterns already proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors of object-oriented software; now, they are, candidate to play a similar role in the MAS (multi-agent system) context. In this work we describe our experiences in the identification, production and application of patterns for agents. Some patterns are described together with the classification criteria and documentation approach we adopt. Upon them, we base a pattern reuse process that can be considered one of the distinguishing elements of the design methodology (PASSI) we use to develop MAS. Patterns can be applied to an existing agent or used to produce a new one with the support of a specific web based application that can read both the JAVA source code and XMI representation of the agent design documentation. After the successful application of the desired pattern(s), the source code and the design diagrams (usually a structural and dynamic diagram) of the agent can be exported. Some experimental results are reported in order to demonstrate the utility of this approach in automatically producing an interesting percentage of code lines.},

keywords = {Design Process, JADE, Multi agent systems},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

@inproceedings{cossentinoPossibleApproachDevelopment2003,

title = {A Possible Approach to the Development of Robotic Multi-Agent Systems},

author = { Massimo Cossentino and Luca Sabatucci and Antonio Chella},

doi = {10.1109/IAT.2003.1241140},

year  = {2003},

date = {2003-01-01},

booktitle = {IEEE/WIC International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, 2003. IAT 2003.},

pages = {539--544},

publisher = {IEEE},

abstract = {The design of a an agent system for robotics is a problem that involves aspects coming from many different disciplines (robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, software engineering). The most difficult part of it, often consists in producing and tuning the algorithms that incorporates the robot behavior (planning, obstacle avoidance,. . . ) and abilities (vision, manipulation, navigation,. . . ). Frequently, the reuse of these parts is left to a copy and paste procedure from previous applications to the new one. In so doing many problems could arise. We propose a comprehensive approach for multi-agent systems oriented to robotics applications that uses a complete design methodology supported by a specific design tools and a pattern repository that interacting each other and with the designer allow the production of a coherent design that easily incorporates patterns coming from previously experienced features and automatically produces a large part of the final code},

keywords = {Agents, Design Process, Multi agent systems, Reusability, Robotic Applications},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}