This paper will be available soon. - This paper introduces key-features of a multi-agent prototype, which is integrated in a well-known approach of development of distributed artificial intelligence tools, and constitutes the first stage of our effort towards a multi-agent system for designing engineering applications and especially power electronic converters. The design needs a high level of expertise and requires the cooperation of several multidisciplinary groups. In order to ensure the coordination of the design activities of these groups, we associate each expert that participates in designing the power circuit with an agent, which substitutes this expert and will simulate his reasoning. To manage communications between agents, we have chosen a Java implementation of the Actor model, called Epidaure, which constitutes an environment where communications are done via message passing. This paper will give an outline of some artificial intelligence applications. Emerging theories in the area are also reviewed. This paper will present more particularly the aspect of the agent structure and reasoning process, and will show how a decentralized organisation with simple communication is a reasonable trade-off between a centralized architecture and the use of global knowledge.
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