The agentmodel in amulti-agent system (MAS) environmentwith the restriction of time
and resourceswas investigated, and a generalhierarchical framework of the hybrid agentwasproposed.
This framework has a four-layer structure with feature declaration, mental status, computing and
processing, and information interacting layers. The architecture, roles in the organization and
components of the agentwere analyzed. UML (unified modeling language) technologieswere used to
construct the conceptualclassdiagram of the agen.t The designmethodsof formalization expression and
general agentprogram were given. The implementationmechanism of integrated scheduling engine and
concurrentmessage processing was expatiated. The framework has been applied to the research of
wide-area power line protection agentof theQinghai-Tibet railway, andmulti agentswere designed to
implement the collaborative protection function to solve the problem of improper actions resulted from
the traditional protection. The application shows that the proposed framework is effective for the
complex problem.