The ENGINES project funded by the Italian MUR program PRIN 2022, grant 20229ZXBZM, with start date 28/09/2023 and end date 28/02/2026, considers the increasingly-relevant role played by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in daily-life scenarios along with the overwhelming amount of AI techniques that engineers have at their disposal for Intelligent Systems Engineering (ISE). While engineers should have models and tools enabling to synergically exploit different AI techniques in an integrated way, this usually does not happen nowadays, as different AI techniques are mostly used either in isolation or with ad-hoc integrations tailored to a specific application—hence hindering both re-usability and conceptual integrity. Furthermore, whereas specific engineering methods and tools are available for specific techniques – such as for machine learning platforms or agent-oriented programming languages –, a comprehensive approach encompassing complementary AI techniques is currently missing. Agent-oriented models and technologies may help face this issue, as they offer abstractions, methods, and tools for ISE, by providing the common conceptual and technological grounding for their well-founded integration. The overarching goal of the project is to define the ENGINES conceptual and technical framework providing models, guidelines, and tools for the integration of intelligent agent techniques, and in particular intelligent agent models and technologies with some selected AI techniques:

Here, other mature AI techniques – such as machine learning – could be used as off-the-shelf components in specific modules. In particular, we take as a reference the BDI intelligent agent logic and architecture as the de-facto standard for the engineering of intelligent agents capable of rational reasoning in dynamic environments. This makes it possible the engineering of intelligent systems based on existing and effective agent technologies augmented with the aforementioned AI techniques in a coherent, well-founded, comprehensive framework—instead of current practice based on ad-hoc solutions.

The Operative Unit of Genova, involving Viviana Mascardi, Davide Ancona, Andrea Gatti (PhD student) and Andrea Pagliaricci (scholarship on the project's funds) contributed to the ENGINES project in various ways: