Safety of the airborne platforms rests heavily on the way they are maintained. This maintenance includes repairs and testing, to reduce platform down time. Maintenance is performed using generic and specific test equipment within the existing maintenance management system (MMS). This thesis reports the work undertaken to improve maintainability and availability of avionics systems using an intelligent decision support system (IDSS). In order to understand the shortcomings of the existing system, the prevalent practices and methodologies are researched. This research thesis reports the development and implementation of an IDSS and the significant improvements made by this IDSS by integrating autonomous and independent information sources by employing a multi-agent system (MAS). Data mining techniques and intelligence agents (IA) are employed to create an expert system. The developed IDSS successfully demonstrates its ability to integrate and collate the available information and convert into valuable knowledge. Using this knowledge, the IDSS is able to generate interpreted alerts, warnings and recommendations thereby reasonably improving platform maintainability and availability. All facets of integrated logistics support (ILS) are considered to create a holistic picture. As the system ages, the IDSS also matures to assist managers and maintainers in making informed decisions about the platform, the unit under test (UUT) and even the environment that supports the platform.

Dans le but de remédier aux problèmes aujourd’hui omniprésents dans le secteur du transport, qu’ils soient financiers, environnementaux ou autres, nous nous intéressons à l’établissement d’un système de covoiturage dynamique optimisé. La voiture partagée est venue subvenir à des besoins restés insatisfaits en matière de déplacement (flexibilité spatiotemporelle…) encourageant l’émergence d’un mode de transport révolutionnaire qu’est la comodalité. Le focus est alors mis sur la complémentarité entre les modes collectifs et individuels et vient considérer la voiture partagée et plus particulièrement le covoiturage comme des modes de transport à part entière. Placés dans ce cadre, nous nous intéressons à l’aspect temps réel dans les systèmes de covoiturage et développons nos travaux dans ce sens. Ce problème ayant une complexité qui n’est pas des moindres, tous nos efforts sont dirigés dans le but de contrecarrer cet obstacle et mettre en œuvre une application logicielle compétitive à grande échelle offrant satisfaction et qualité de service. Pour ce faire, nous considérons une alliance des systèmes multi-agents et des techniques d’optimisation donnant lieu à des agents optimisateurs répartis selon une modélisation de graphe dynamique distribué. Celui-ci est établi sur la base d’un principe de décomposition du réseau géographique desservi inspiré des techniques de classification pour la mise en exergue des zones de concentration des abonnés. Cette modélisation favorise le traitement parallèle des requêtes de par la décentralisation et décomposition du processus initial sur une multitude d’agents optimisateurs chargés chacun d’une ou plusieurs tâches de moindre complexité / In an attempt to address the transportation problems now ubiquitous, may them be financial, environmental or any, we are mainly involved with the establishment of a dynamic optimized carpooling service. Shared cars came to remedy these problems and meet the longtime remained unsatisfied needs (spatiotemporal flexibility…) and so promote the comodal practice. The stress is then put on the complementarity between collective and individual means of transportation and comes to confirm the shared car and more particularly the carpooling as a transport mode as a whole. Based on this, we are mainly interested in setting up a real time ridesharing service providing the needed efficiency in such a context. In fact, the problem we tackle has a complexity of exponential order which must be wiped out preventing from adverse impacts. Blending the agent paradigm with the optimization technics helped reach our goals of implementing a large-scale competitive and fully automated support and providing the necessary efficiency and quality of service. The proposed alliance is realized through communicating optimizing agents spread according to a distributed dynamic graph modeling. The latter is established through a subdivision process of the served geographic network and has been inspired from clustering technics to put the stress on limited and intersecting areas of high density. This helps to promote the parallel requests treatment over a decentralized process. Thus, each optimizing agent firstly manage the requests parts included within the zone it is responsible for and then recompose global responses in coalition with concerned agents in a distributed artificial intelligence context

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:47:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DanielleGFM_DISSERT.pdf: 2687890 bytes, checksum: b53115296e0be43418332dfb089a931a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-13 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The World Wide Web has been consolidated over the last years as a standard platform to provide software systems in the Internet. Nowadays, a great variety of user applications are available on the Web, varying from corporate applications to the banking domain, or from electronic commerce to the governmental domain. Given the quantity of information available and the quantity of users dealing with their services, many Web systems have sought to present recommendations of use as part of their functionalities, in order to let the users to have a better usage of the services available, based on their profile, history navigation and system use. In this context, this dissertation proposes the development of an agent-based framework that offers recommendations for users of Web systems. It involves the conception, design and implementation of an object-oriented framework. The framework agents can be plugged or unplugged in a non-invasive way in existing Web applications using aspect-oriented techniques. The framework is evaluated through its instantiation to three different Web systems / A World Wide Web, ou simplesmente Web, se consolidou ao longo dos ?ltimos anos como uma plataforma padr?o para disponibilizar sistemas de software de diferentes naturezas na Internet. Atualmente, uma grande variedade de aplica??es est? dispon?vel na plataforma Web, variando desde aplica??es corporativas do dom?nio banc?rio, governamental e at? com?rcio eletr?nico. Dada a quantidade de informa??o disponibilizada e de usu?rios usando seus servi?os, muitos sistemas Web tem buscado apresentar recomenda??es como parte de suas funcionalidades, com o objetivo de permitir ao usu?rio um melhor uso dos servi?os dispon?veis, baseado no perfil do usu?rio e no seu hist?rico de navega??o e uso do sistema. Neste contexto, este trabalho de disserta??o prop?e o desenvolvimento de um framework de agentes de usu?rio que ofere?am recomenda??es para usu?rios de sistemas Web. Este trabalho envolve a concep??o, projeto e implementa??o de um framework orientado a objetos que permite o desenvolvimento de agentes de usu?rio de recomenda??o para sistemas Web. Os agentes do framework podem ser plugados ou desplugados de forma n?o invasiva em aplica??es Web existentes, atrav?s de uma implementa??o orientada a aspectos. O framework foi avaliado atrav?s da sua instancia??o para tr?s sistemas Web de naturezas distinta

[pt] Uma Linha de Produtos de Sistemas Multi-agentes (LP-SMA) define uma arquitetura de linha de produto de software (LPS) cujo projeto e implementação são realizados usando agentes de software para compreender features comuns e variáveis. O desenvolvimento de LP-SMA pode ser feito através de plataformas específicas de SMA e técnicas de implementação. Exemplos de tais técnicas são: frameworks orientados a objetos, compilação condicional, arquivos de configuração e programação orientada a aspectos (POA). Todavia, os estudos empíricos existentes não focam na abordagem de LP-SMA, considerando diferentes técnicas de implementação e plataformas específicas de desenvolvimento de SMA. Nesse contexto, este trabalho apresenta uma comparação sistemática de diferentes técnicas de implementação de variabilidades de features de agentes no domínio de LP-SMA. Esta comparação sistemática envolveu o uso de duas plataformas de desenvolvimento de SMA (JADE e Jadex) e das técnicas de implementação: compilação condicional, arquivos de configuração e POA. Neste estudo, um conjunto de métricas de software foram utilizadas para avaliar atributos de qualidade, tais como modularidade e estabilidade. Para a realização deste estudo, duas LP-SMAs foram desenvolvidas. A primeira foi a LP-SMA do Expert Committee, uma linha de produto de sistemas de gerenciamento de conferências. A segunda foi a LP-SMA OLIS, que provê diversos serviços pessoais para os usuários. Os dados coletados durante a realização dos estudos empíricos permitiram o relato de um conjunto de lições aprendidas. / [en] A Multi-agent System Product Line (MAS-PL) defines a Software Product Line (SPL) architecture whose design and implementation are accomplished using software agents to address its common and variable features. The MAS-PL development can be performed through MAS specific platforms and implementation techniques. Examples of such techniques are: object-oriented frameworks, conditional compilation, configuration files and aspect-oriented programming (AOP). However, the existing empirical studies do not focus on MAS-PL approach, considering different implementation techniques and MAS specific platforms. In this context, this work presents a systematic comparison of different variability implementation techniques of agent features in the MAS-PL domain. This systematic comparison involved the use of two platforms of MAS development (JADE and Jadex) and implementation techniques conditional compilation, configuration files and AOP. In this study, a suite of software metries were used to evaluate quality attributes, such as modularity and stability. In order to perform this study, two MAS-PLs were developed. The first one was the Expert Commitee MAS-PL, a product line of conference management systems. The second one as the OLIS MAS-PL, which provides several personal services to the users. The collected data during the accomplished empirical studies allowed to report a set of lessons learned.

Zum Verständnis menschlichen sozialen, administrativen und wirtschaftlichen Verhaltens, das als Spiel bzw. strategische Interaktion aufgefasst werden kann, reichen die rein analytischen Methoden nicht aus. Es ist nötig, Daten menschlichen strategischen Verhaltens zu sammeln. Basierend auf Daten lässt sich solches Verhalten modellieren, simulieren bzw. vorhersagen. Der theoretische Teil der Zielsetzung wird über praxisorientierte Konzeptualisierung strategischer Interaktion realer Agenten - Menschen und Maschinen - und gegenseitige Integration der Konzepte aus Spieltheorie und Multiagentensysteme erreicht, die über die bisherigen Ansätze hinausgehen. Der praktische Teil besteht darin, ein allgemein verwendbares System zu entwerfen, das strategische Interaktionen zwischen realen Agenten mit maximalen wissenschaftlichen Nutzen durchführen kann. Die tatsächliche Implementation ist eines der Ergebnisse der Arbeit. Ähnliche vorhandene Systeme sind GDL-Server (für Maschinen) [Genesereth u.a., 2005] und z-Tree (für Menschen) [Fischbacher, 2007]. Die Arbeit ist in drei Bereiche unterteilt - (1) Entwicklung von Sprachen für die Beschreibung eines Spiels, (2) ein auf diesen Sprachen basierendes Softwaresystem und (3) eine Offline-Analyse der u.a. mit dem System bereits gesammelten Daten als Beitrag zur Möglichkeiten der Verhaltensbeschreibung. Die Innovation dieser Arbeit besteht nicht nur darin ,einzelne Bereiche mit einander zu kombinieren, sondern auch Fortschritte auf jedem Bereich für sich allein zu erreichen. Im Bereich der Spielbeschreibungssprachen, werden zwei Sprachen - PNSI und SIDL - vorgeschlagen, die beide Spiele bei imperfekter Information in diskreter Zeit definieren können. Dies ist ein Fortschritt gegenüber der bisherigen Sprachen wie Gala und GDL. Speziell die auf Petrinetzen basierende Sprache PNSI kann gleichermaßen für Gameserver und für spieltheoretische Algorithmen von z.B. GAMBIT verwendet werden. Das entwickelte System FRAMASI basiert auf JADE [Bellifemine u.a., 2001] und ist den bisherigen Client-Server-Lösungen durch Vorteile der Multiagentensysteme voraus. Mit dem entstandenen System wurde bereits ein Experiment entsprechend den Standards der experimentellen Spieltheorie durchgeführt und somit die Praxistauglichkeit nachgewiesen. Das Experiment hatte als Ziel, Daten zur menschlichen Unvorhersagbarkeit und zur Vorhersagefähigkeit anderer zu liefen. Dafür wurden Varianten von \"Knobeln\" verwendet. Die Daten dieses Experiments sowie eines Experiments einer externen Arbeitsgruppe mit ähnlicher Motivation wurden mit Hilfe von Datamining analysiert. Dabei wurden die in der Literatur berichteten Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Verhaltens nachgewiesen und weitere Gesetzmäßigkeiten entdeckt. / To understand human social, administrative and economic behavior, which can be considered as a game or strategic interaction, the purely analytical methods do not suffice. It is necessary to gather data of human strategic behavior. Based on data, one can model, simulate and predict such behavior. The theoretical part of the objective is achieved using a practice oriented conceptualization of the real agents\' - humans and machines - strategic interaction and mutual integration of the concepts from game theory and multi-agent systems, which go beyond the related work. The practical part is the design of an universally usable system that can perform the strategic interactions between real agents with maximum scientific benefit. The current implementation is one of the results of the work. Similar existing systems are GDL-server (for machines) [Genesereth et al., 2005] and z-Tree (for humans) [Fischbacher, 2007]. The work is divided in three fields - (1) development of languages for the description of a game, (2) a software system based on these languages and (3) an offline analysis of the data already gathered among other things using the system as a contribution to behavior definition facilities. The innovation of this work does not consist only in combining of the several fields to each other, but also in achieving of improvements in every field on its own. In the field of game definition languages, two languages are proposed - PNSI and SIDL, which both can define games of imperfect information in discrete time. It is an improvement comparing with hitherto languages as Gala and GDL. Especially, the Petri net based language PNSI can likewise be used for game servers and game theoretic algorithms like GAMBIT. The developed system FRAMASI is based on JADE [Bellifemine et al., 2001] and is ahead of the hitherto client-server solutions through the advantages of the multi-agent systems. Using the originated system, an experiment has been conducted according to the standards from the experimental game theory, and thus demonstrated the practicability. The experiment had the objective to provide data on the human unpredictability and the ability to predict others. Therefore, variants of Roshambo were used. The data from this experiment and from an experiment of an external workgroup with a similar motivation were analyzed using data mining. As results, the regularities of the behavior reported in literature have been demonstrated and further regularities have been discovered.

Dans la recherche de performance de chaînes logistiques, la modélisation et la simulation de ces chaînes prenant en compte des aspects organisationnels s‘avèrent nécessaire. Dans cette perspective, nous proposons tout d‘abord un nouveau cadre méthodologique de modélisation et simulation orienté agents de chaînes logistiques, prenant en compte explicitement les aspects organisationnels, tant structurels que dynamiques, ainsi que des observables et indicateurs dans la modélisation de ces chaînes. Ce cadre méthodologique est structuré selon deux niveaux d'abstraction principale qui sont : un niveau conceptuel et un niveau opérationnel. Pour chacun de ces niveaux nous avons différents modèles qui sont proposés et décrit en détail. Ensuite, afin de simuler les modèles de simulation de ces chaines logistiques obtenus par ce cadre méthodologique, nous proposons une architecture logicielle multi-paradigmes spécifique. Cette architecture qui supporte l‘intégration de différentes plates-formes de simulation, est basée sur un médiateur, constituant un système multi-agents, et assurant l‘interaction entre les simulateurs. Les agents de ce médiateur sont chargés de collecter les informations permettant de produire les observables, maintenir la structure organisationnelle lorsque des entités organisationnelles (groupes) sont distribués sur différents simulateurs, l‘interopérabilité entre ces simulateurs, et enfin garantir la validité de la simulation d‘un point de vue temporel. Enfin, la mise en œuvre du cadre méthodologique et de l‘architecture logicielle proposés sont illustrées sur un cas industriel réaliste de chaîne logistique. La présentation des phases de conception est détaillée ainsi que la spécification et l‘implémentation du cas industriel au sein de l‘environnement de modélisation et de simulation proposé. / In the search for performance of supply chains, modeling and simulation of these chains, taking into account the organizational aspects are needed. In this perspective, firstly we propose a new methodology for modeling and simulation of supply chains oriented agents, taking into account explicitly the organizational aspects, both structural and dynamic as well as observable indicators in the modeling of these chains. This methodological framework is structured along two main levels of abstraction, conceptual and operational levels. For each level we have models that are proposed and described in details. Then, to simulate the simulation models of supply chains obtained by this methodological framework, we propose a multi-paradigm software architecture specific. This architecture supports the integration of different platforms simulation is based on a mediator, providing a multi-agent system, and ensuring the interaction between the simulators. The agents of this mediator is responsible for collecting required information to produce observables and maintaining the organizational structure while the organizational entities (groups) are distributed over different simulators and interoperability between these simulators, and finally ensuring the validity of the simulation for a temporal point of view. Finally, the implementation of the methodological framework and the proposed software architecture are shown in a realistic industrial case supply chain. The presentation of the design phase is detailed and the specification and implementation of industrial case in environmental modeling and simulation proposed.

Le Système-de-Systèmes (SdS) devient l'un des principaux paradigmes pour l'ingénieriedes solutions de la prochaine génération, telles que les villes intelligentes, les bâtiments intelligents,les systèmes médicaux, les systèmes d'interventions d'urgence et les systèmes de défense. Parconséquent, l'intérêt apporté aux SdS, leur architecture et surtout leur sécurité est en croissancecontinue. Cependant, les caractéristiques de différenciation des SdS, telles que le comportementémergent et l'indépendance managériale et opérationnelle de ses constituants, peuvent introduiredes problèmes spécifiques qui rendent leurs modélisation, simulation et analyse de sécurité un déficritique. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions comment les approches du génie logiciel peuvent êtreétendues pour modéliser et analyser les architectures sécurisées de SdS, afin de découvrir lesattaques à fort impact (attaques en cascade) tôt à la phase d'architecture. Pour atteindre notreobjectif, nous proposons une méthode d'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM), nommée Systems-of-Systems Security (SoSSec), qui comprend: (1) un langage de modélisation (SoSSecML) pour lamodélisation des architectures sécurisées des SdS, et une extension des Systèmes Multi-Agents(SMA) pour l'analyse des architectures sécurisées des SdS; (2) les outils correspondants: un éditeurgraphique, un générateur de code, une extension de la plate-forme Java Agent Development (JADE)pour la simulation des SMA, un outil personnalisé pour l'enregistrement des résultats de simulation;et (3) un processus pour guider l'utilisation de la méthode SoSSec. Pour illustrer notre approche,nous avons réalisé un cas d'étude sur un bâtiment intelligent réel, le bâtiment de l'école de santé del'Université d'Adélaïde (AHMS). / Systems-of-Systems (SoS) is becoming one of the major paradigm forengineering next generation solutions such as smart cities, smart buildings, health-care, emergencyresponse and defense. Therefore, there is a growing interest in SoS, their architecture and speciallytheir security. However, SoS differentiating characteristics, such as emergent behavior andmanagerial and operational independence of its constituents, may introduce specific issues thatmake their security modeling, simulation and analysis a critical challenge. In this thesis we investigatehow Software Engineering approaches can be extended to model and analyze secure SoS solutionsfor discovering high impact attacks (cascading attacks) at the architecture stage. In order to achieveour objective, we propose a Model Driven Engineering method, Systems-of-Systems Security(SoSSec), that comprises: (1) a modeling description language (SoSSecML) for secure SoS modelingand an extension of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) for secure SoS architecture analysis, (2) thecorresponding tools: a graphical editor, a code generator, an extension of the Java AgentDevelopment (JADE) MAS simulation framework, a custom logging tool, (3) an utilization process toguide the use of the SoSSec method. To illustrate our approach we conducted a case study on a reallifesmart building SoS, the Adelaide University Health and Medical School (AHMS).

[pt] Aplicações ubíquas estão inseridas em ambientes inteligentes integrados ao mundo físico e compostos de usuários com diferentes preferências, dispositivos heterogêneos e vários provedores de serviço e conteúdo. Além disso, essas aplicações são especializadas em oferecer serviços e conteúdos em qualquer lugar e momento, auxiliando os usuários em suas atividades diárias sem incomodá-los. Baseado nesse mundo idealizado, o paradigma em qualquer lugar e momento impõe alguns desafios para a comunidade de Engenharia de Software, tais como: heterogeneidade de dispositivos, ambientes distribuídos, mobilidade, satisfação de usuário, adaptação de conteúdo, sensibilidade de contexto, privacidade, personalização, transparência, invisibilidade e constante evolução das tendências tecnológicas. Visando lidar com esses novos desafios tecnológicos, é proposta uma abordagem orientada à reutilização de software para desenvolvimento incremental e sistemático de aplicações ubíquas intencionais. Foram escolhidos dois principais objetivos para conduzir a pesquisa dessa tese: (i) a construção de conjuntos de apoio, orientados à reutilização de software, com base em uma investigação detalhada de aplicações ubíquas e do paradigma de Sistemas Multi-Agentes Intencionais – ou seja, Desenvolvimento para Reutilização; e (ii) o desenvolvimento incremental e sistemático de aplicações ubíquas, dirigidas por Sistemas Multi-Agentes Intencionais, com base na abordagem orientada à reutilização de software – ou seja, Desenvolvimento com Reutilização. Algumas contribuições do nosso trabalho são: (i) uma arquitetura orientada à reutilização de software e baseada nos conjuntos de apoio – i.e. blocos de construção principalmente compostos de modelos conceituais, frameworks, padrões e bibliotecas – obtidos a partir da Engenharia de Domínio das Aplicações Ubíquas; (ii) uma Engenharia de Aplicações Ubíquas orientada à reutilização de software visando o desenvolvimento incremental e sistemático de aplicações ubíquas com base nos blocos de construção propostos; (iii) um modelo de raciocínio focado em regras condicionais de lógica nebulosa e no modelo Crença-Desejo-Intenção para melhorar a capacidade cognitiva dos agentes; (iv) um mecanismo específico, baseado em agentes intencionais, para lidar com questões de privacidade, balanceando privacidade e personalização bem como transparência e invisibilidade; (v) um catálogo que graficamente apresenta os principais requisitos não-funcionais ubíquos, as interdependências entre eles e formas de se operacionalizá-los com base na combinação de tecnologias tradicionais e emergentes; (vi) ontologias para permitir a construção dinâmica de interfaces e melhorar a comunicação e inter-operabilidade dos agentes de software; e (vii) um modelo de banco de dados dinâmico para carregar e recuperar os perfis ubíquos (ex. perfis de usuário, dispositivo, rede e contrato), melhorando o gerenciamento de dados em tempo de execução. A abordagem proposta foi avaliada desenvolvendo diferentes aplicações ubíquas (ex. aplicações ubíquas de comércio eletrônico e de clínica odontológica). / [en] Ubiquitous applications are embedded in intelligent environments integrated into the physical world and composed of users with different preferences, heterogeneous devices and several content and service providers. Moreover, they focus on offering services and contents anywhere and at any time by assisting the users in their daily activities without disturbing them. Based on this idealized world, the anywhere and at any time paradigm poses some challenges for the Software Engineering community, such as: device heterogeneity, distributed environments, mobility, user satisfaction, content adaptability, context awareness, privacy, personalization, transparency, invisibility and constant evolution of technological trends. In order to deal with these new technological challenges, we propose a Reuse-Oriented Approach for Incremental and Systematic Development of Intentional Ubiquitous Applications. We have chosen two main goals that drive our research in this thesis: (i) the construction of reuse-oriented support sets based on an extensive investigation of ubiquitous applications and the Intentional-Multi-Agent Systems paradigm – i.e. Development for Reuse; and (ii) the incremental and systematic development of Intentional-Multi-Agent-Systems-driven ubiquitous applications based on the reuse-oriented approach – i.e. Development with Reuse. Some contributions of our work are: (i) a reuse-oriented architecture centered on support sets – i.e. building blocks mainly composed of conceptual models, frameworks, patterns and libraries – obtained from the Domain Engineering of Ubiquitous Applications; (ii) a reuse-oriented Ubiquitous Application Engineering for incremental and systematic development of intentional ubiquitous applications centered on the proposed building blocks; (iii) a reasoning engine focused on fuzzy conditional rules and the Belief-Desire-Intention model to improve the agents cognitive capacity; (iv) a specific mechanism based on intentional agents to deal with privacy issues by balancing privacy and personalization as well as transparency and invisibility; (v) a catalogue that graphically presents the main ubiquitous non-functionalrequirements, their interdependencies and ways to operationalize them based on the combination of traditional and emergent technologies; (vi) ontologies to allow the dynamic construction of interfaces and to improve the communication and inter-operability of software agents; and (vii) a dynamic database model to store and retrieve the ubiquitous profiles (e.g. user, device, network and contract profiles) by improving the data management on the fly. The proposed approach was evaluated by developing different ubiquitous applications (e.g. e-commerce and dental clinic ubiquitous applications).

Este trabalho apresentará estudos referentes a uma proposta de arquitetura para ambientes computacionais de suporte à colaboração para auxiliar o ensino e o treinamento em áreas multidisciplinares de engenharia de controle e automação. A motivação provém de evoluções de tecnologias da Web, redes sociais, ambientes virtuais, e mundos virtuais 3D que proporcionam sucessivas possibilidades inovadoras de emprego de tecnologia no ensino. Estas tecnologias podem ser usadas no ensino à distância ou de forma complementar (ensino híbrido) ao ensino-aprendizagem tradicional. O emprego de ambientes computacionais virtuais como incubadores para o desenvolvimento e criação de uma infinidade de materiais educacionais e didáticos torna-se crescentemente frequente na comunidade científica ao passo que instituições de ensino percebem o potencial desta iniciativa. A colaboração virtual entre estudantes dispersos geograficamente e a cooperação entre instituições de ensino diversas são indicadores do avanço destas metodologias. À medida que ambientes virtuais evoluem, podem-se empregar cada vez mais funcionalidades e tecnologias a este complemento ou ferramenta de ensino. É sabido que a prática laboratorial é de suma importância para aprendizagem de áreas tecnológicas, como a engenharia elétrica. Maneiras de expandir esta prática aliada a outras técnicas altamente defendidas na comunidade científica serão abordadas neste estudo, que sucede a um trabalho anterior do autor, no qual é proposto a conjunção de componentes de automação simulados com reais de forma a expandir cenários didáticos. A automação destes ambientes voltados ao ensino passa a se tornar real através de técnicas computacionais relacionadas a gerenciamento, monitoração e adaptação de conteúdo. Dentre as tecnologias e características englobadas pela arquitetura proposta estão: ambientes sociais, ambientes imersivos com visualização tridimensional (metaversos), tutoriamento virtual autônomo baseado em coleta de informações de interação, auxílio à colaboração de usuários, experimentos com componentes intercambiáveis de realidade mista e outras funcionalidades afins. De forma a propor uma implementação viável para este nicho de pesquisa foram desenvolvidos vários estudos de caso e um protótipo, chamado de 3D AutoSysLab, um ambiente imersivo virtual otimizado com ligações a experimentos de realidade mista, visualização de materiais educacionais e mídias interativas, auxílio à colaboração, e suporte à tutoriamento autônomo. Tanto testes do protótipo quanto a utilização dos estudos de caso serviram de validação experimental do trabalho. A validação da utilização ainda não se encontra completa embora resultados preliminares apontem a queda do índice de reprovação de estudantes da Engenharia Elétrica na UFRGS em uma determinada unidade curricular. O emprego de técnicas de acesso remoto além de proporcionar que instituições de ensino cooperem compartilhando recursos materiais/equipamentos também abre horizontes para a colaboração de estudantes entre instituições. Isso alavanca uma melhoria na qualidade do conjunto ensino-aprendizagem e também no emprego de recursos tecnológicos, o que pode, inclusive, representar uma alternativa econômica viável para a prática laboratorial. / This work will present studies towards a proposal of architecture for computer supported collaborative environments applied to enhance learning and training of multidisciplinary areas linked to automation and control engineering. Recent evolutions of Web technologies, social networks, virtual environments, and 3D virtual worlds motivate the adoption of new technologies in education, opening successive innovative possibilities. These technologies or tools can be used in distance education scenarios and/or can also enhance traditional learning-teaching (blended or hybrid learning scenario). The use of virtual environments as breeding grounds for creation and display of learning and didactical materials is a trend among educational institutes since they realized the potential of this endeavor. Physically dispersed and geographically distant students can collaborate in virtual learning environments as well as educational institutions, proving the advance of learning methodologies involving technology. New functionalities to this teaching and learning complementary tool can be added as virtual environments continually evolve. It is known and a wide advocated issue that laboratorial practice is essential to technical education, foremost in engineering. Expanding and obtaining the optimal results from this practice allied to other tools can be seen as the natural continuation of previous work from the author, in which is described a strategy to use mixed reality interchangeable components applied in didactic experiments to broaden learning scenarios. The automation of virtual learning environments is beginning to mature through computational techniques related to management, monitoring and content adaptation. In order to develop a feasible implementation to this research area, several case studies and a prototype were elaborated, the last called 3D AutoSysLab, in which a metaverse is used as interface, experiments are linked to virtual objects representations, learning objects are displayed in a simple way with interactive medias and simple collaboration and feedback is given through an autonomous tutoring system. The experimental validation was based on the use and evaluation of the prototype and his separated modules (case studies). Preliminary results showed that the failure rate, in a determined curriculum unit from the Electrical Engineering of UFRGS, has dropped and the student’s acceptance was very high in a blended learning scenario. The remote experimentation brings up the possibility to narrow different learning institutions in cooperation, this way sharing material resources (equipments) and closing up students. From cooperation and collaboration is expected a leveling and optimization of quality of the pair teaching-learning, as well as a better employment of economical resources.

[pt] O gerenciamento de projetos de software enfrenta diversos desafios que devem ser superados ao longo do desenvolvimento para garantir seu sucesso. Diversas ferramentas e abordagens foram propostas na literatura para auxiliar gerentes de projeto com tais questões. Assim, propõe-se utilizar duas tendências promissoras da engenharia de software pouco exploradas nesse contexto, que consiste em desenvolver uma linha de produto de sistemas de gerenciamento de projetos baseados em agentes. O uso de linhas de produto de software permite derivar sistemas customizados segundo o tamanho do projeto. Entre os benefícios do uso de agentes tem-se a reconfiguração dinâmica do sistema a partir da exploração de suas características, como raciocínio e adaptação. / [en] Software project management faces several challenges that must be overcome throughout the development to guarantee its success. Many tools and approaches have been proposed in the literature to help project managers with these issues. Thus, it is proposed to use two promising software engineering trends barely exploited in this context, which consists of the development of a software product line of project management systems based on agents. The use of software product lines allows the derivation of customized systems based on the project size. Among the benefits of using agents it is included the system dynamic reconfiguration from the exploitation of their characteristics, such as reasoning and adaptation.