Exploratory Experiments on Programming Autonomous Robots in Jadescript

AOP (Agent-Oriented Programming) [30] is a programming paradigm that aims at providing effective languages and tools to develop agent-based software systems (e.g., [16]). The most challenging parts of the development of complex agent-based software systems are expected to be leveraged by AOP languages and tools. AOP languages and tools allow programmers to reason on high-level views of multi-agent systems instead of concentrating on fine-grained details that tend to distract attention from targeted problems. Examples of such challenging parts of the development of complex agent-based software systems are the deployment of agents to network hosts, the routing of messages across the network, and the handling of sensor information. The abstractions that AOP languages normally support and that make such languages suitable for agent-based software development are discussed, for example, in the specifications from FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents), now IEEE FIPA Standards Committee (http://www.fipa.org),