A Formal Compositional Model of Multiagent Interaction

Sea Ling; Seng Wai Loke

A Formal Compositional Model of Multiagent Interaction

Sea Ling, Seng Wai Loke

Dept of Software Systems & Cybersecurity

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

Abstract

Interaction protocols for multiagent systems have been described diagrammatically in an extension of UML called AUML (Agent UML). In this paper, we show how to translate these protocols to equivalent Petri net specifications. A novelty of our approach is that the Petri nets are modular, clearly separating the protocol from the interaction behaviour of agents induced by their participation in the protocol, yet compositional. We contend that compositionality is useful since multiagent systems and their interactions are inherently modular, and so that mission-critical parts of a system can be analysed separately. Our model can serve at least two purposes in multigent systems engineering: firstly, specification and verification, and secondly, as a basis for synthesising skeleton code of interacting agents from specifications in the spirit of interaction-oriented programming.

Original language	English
Pages	1052-1053
Number of pages	2
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2003
Event	Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 03 - Melbourne, Australia Duration: 14 Jul 2003 → 18 Jul 2003

Conference

Conference	Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 03
Country	Australia
City	Melbourne
Period	14/07/03 → 18/07/03

Keywords

Agent-oriented software engineering
Compositional specifications
Interaction protocols
Petri nets

Access to Document

Link to publication in Scopus

Cite this

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AB - Interaction protocols for multiagent systems have been described diagrammatically in an extension of UML called AUML (Agent UML). In this paper, we show how to translate these protocols to equivalent Petri net specifications. A novelty of our approach is that the Petri nets are modular, clearly separating the protocol from the interaction behaviour of agents induced by their participation in the protocol, yet compositional. We contend that compositionality is useful since multiagent systems and their interactions are inherently modular, and so that mission-critical parts of a system can be analysed separately. Our model can serve at least two purposes in multigent systems engineering: firstly, specification and verification, and secondly, as a basis for synthesising skeleton code of interacting agents from specifications in the spirit of interaction-oriented programming.

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