A Tool for Specifying and Validating Agents' Interaction Protocols: From Agent UML to Maude

To achieve the multi-agent systems’ goals, agents interact to exchange information, to cooperate and to coordinate their tasks. Interaction is generally recognized as an important characteristic of multi-agent systems (MAS). The usual approaches to model agents’ interactions consist of describing them as protocols [Hug04]. In the literature, several representation formalisms of agents’ interactions have been proposed. AUML is one among the most used formalisms [Hug02]. However, AUML diagrams only offer a semi-formal specification of interactions. Indeed, the lack of formal semantics in AUML, can lead to several incoherencies in the description of a MAS’ behaviour. We present, in this paper, a visual tool that essentially allows: (1) translating the description of agents’ interaction protocols (AIP), specified by means of AUML formalism, in a Maude specification and, (2) validating the generated formal descriptions through simulation. Based on rewriting logic, the formal and ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JOT
• Authors: Farid Mokhati, Brahim Sahraoui, Soufiane Bouzaher, Mohamed Tahar Kimour
• Keywords: AUML, Interaction Protocol, JOT 2010, Multi-agent Systems