Assoc ProfessorRem Collier

My core research interests are centered around Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), and more specfiically, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) / Programming (AOP). From 1996 to 2010, my primary research focus was the Agent Factory framework, an Agent-Oriented Software Engineering framework that combined a distributed run-time environment, a toolkit for rapidly prototyping agent architectures and programming languages, a suite of tools for working one of these languages - the Agent Factory Agent Programming Language, and an associated Software Engineering methodology.

In 2010, I took the decision to move away from Agent Factory and to develop a new Agent Programming Language called the AgentSpeak(TR) Agent (ASTRA) programming language. ASTRAs design is motivated by the many experiences I had applying Agent Factory to real world problems. Further details of ASTRA can be found bere: http://www.astralanguage.com

More recently, I have become interested in the intersection between MAS and Microservices. Specifically, I aim to explore both how MAS technologies can be deployed effectively in a microservices based architecture; and the impact of Microservices and REpresentational State Transfer (REST) on the design of Multi-Agent Sytems tools. As part of this, I aim to explore the emerging paradigm of Hypermedia MAS - a class of Multi-Agent System that operates within hypermedia-based environments.