Formal Reasoning about Emergent Behaviours of Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract. Emergent behaviour (EB) is a common phenomenon in multi-agent systems (MAS) where autonomous agents perform certain actions with only limited access to local information and make decisions individually, while the whole system demonstrates properties and behaviours that have strong global features. Because of the huge gap between individual agents’ properties and behaviours and those of the whole system, specifying and reasoning about EBs are difficult. In this paper, we propose a framework to the specification of and reasoning about EBs based on our previous work on the SLABS language for the formal specification of MAS. We investigate the uses of the scenario specification in SLABS for the definition of EBs of MAS and study the properties of scenario inclusion, scenario transition and scenario update. The uses of these properties in the proofs of MAS’ EBs are illustrated by an example.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SEKE
• Authors: Hong Zhu
• Keywords: Scenario, Scenario Specification, SEKE 2005, Strong Global Features