International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication ISSN: 2321 - 8169 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 895 - 898 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 895 IJRITCC | February 2015, Available @ http://www.ijritcc.org _______________________________________________________________________________________ Multi-Agents Implementation Frameworks - An Overview Ms. Meena Agrawal, Dr. Arvind Mittal Energy Centre, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT), Bhopal, (MP) India. Email: oshomeena@gmail.com, Email: am1970nit@gmail.com Abstract: Large scale deployment of Micro Grids besides the advanced metering, demand response, reliable communications infrastructure set up has been incorporated into the technological road map of the future smart power grid. To congregate the operation and control needs of distributed energy resources in Micro-Grids the Multi-Agent System (MAS) seem to have splendid features. MAS is an emerging sub-field of Distributed Artificial Intelligence that has the potential to manage the changing face of electric power grid by inculcating intelligent agents into Micro-Grids. To create agents and implement MAS a framework, a platform is obligatory where in the agents reside and operate from. There is a wide range of Multi-agent platforms available on the web like Aglet, Grasshopper, DESIRE, Jadex, ZEUS, JADE etc. Each agent platform has to be evaluated according to the some criteria that have been mentioned in this endeavor. A brief relative appraisal of an assortment of agent platforms has been provided. According to various noteworthy researches the most used platform in micro-grid applications is JADE. This paper presents an architectural and functional overview of the agent building toolkit JADE framework for Multi-Agent System implementation. Keywords: Agents Implementation, Jade Framework, Micro Grid, Multi-Agent system. __________________________________________________*****_________________________________________________ I. INTRODUCTION In line with the global rhythm the Government of India (GoI) too is determined to expedite the impending Smart Grid Technologies. For smartly addressing the problems related to sustainable energy & environment, the Micro Grid deployment is an important that concurrently extracts the benefits of technical advancements. In 2013, the GoI issued Smart Grid Vision and Roadmap for India which is a 15 year map for transformation of the Indian power system to Smart Grids. With the recent activities around 14 Smart Grid Pilot projects in different states, India has emerged as the hot destination for Smart Grids and hence the Micro Grids [1]. The smart grid is to be materialized as a well-planned plug- and-play integration of several smart Micro-Grids that will be interconnected through dedicated ICT highways for command, data, and power exchange. Micro-grids can efficiently integrate distributed and renewable generation resources into the grid and can island & interconnect seamlessly from the grid during peak hours with properly managing the demand response [2]. New control and management paradigms and technologies that are different from the traditional methodologies are necessary for the operation of Micro Grids which are of distributed renewable resources type primarily. Agent-oriented software engineering paradigm represents an interesting means of analyzing, designing and building complex software systems, quite suitable to the requirements of making Micro-Grids smart. Multi-agent system (MAS) is a distributed Computational Intelligence (CI) technique that has been applied to solve several power system problems such as market operation, condition monitoring, fault diagnosis, power system restoration and protection. The agent technology has a great potential to solve problems in the control and management of modern power systems that implement smart grid techniques. [3] A Multi-agent system consists of several agents that interact with one other. An agent may be a physical or virtual entity that can act, perceive its environment in a partial way, communicate with others, and has skills to achieve its goals and tendencies. These interactions are handled by messages that are sent between the agents. Each of the agents can have different goals and behaviors, which together combines to a dynamic system [4]. An agent receives information about a state of its environment, take actions which may alter that state and expresses preferences among the various possible states. The agents interact with one another in order to realize their goals. II. AGENT CREATION & IMPLEMENTATION To create agents and implement MAS a framework, a platform is required where in the agents reside and operate from. By using a platform, the implementation of the system becomes much smaller, because the communication and several other aspects have already been taken care of. This makes it possible to focus solely on the agent implementation itself. There is a wide range of Multi-agent platforms available on the web like Grasshopper, DESIRE, Jadex, TuCSoN, JACK, JAFMAS, ZEUS and JADE [5]. From this wide range of platforms, suitable one can be selected and used. This platform must match some criteria in order to be able to use the agents' possibilities to their full extent and prove to be the right platform for this job. Each of these platforms differ in their features and their flaws and a lot of them are no longer being updated or supported. III. AGENT PLATFORM FEATURES There exist a huge number of approaches, toolkits, and platforms of different quality and maturity, over 100 software products [13]. Therefore a set of criteria requirements for the platforms necessary is to be made. Each agent platform is evaluated according to the following criteria [14]:  Standard compatibilities: common standards for agent technology are FIPA, OMG, MASIF,  Communication: support for inter-platform messaging  Agent mobility: strong (ability of system to migrate code and execution state of executing unit), weak (migration of code only) - clean, efficient method of migrating.  Security policy: secure intra-platform and homogeneous inter-platform communication.