Executable specification of open multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems where the agents are developed by parties with competing interests, and where there is no access to an agent's internal state, are often classified as `open'. The members of such systems may inadvertently fail to, or even deliberately choose not to, conform to the system specification. Consequently, it is necessary to specify the normative relations that may exist between the members, such as permission, obligation, and institutional power. We present a framework being developed for executable specification of open multi-agent systems. We adopt a bird's eye view of these systems, as opposed to an agent's perspective whereby it reasons about how it should act. This paper is devoted to the presentation of various examples from the NetBill protocol formalised in terms of institutional power, permission and obligation. We express the system specification in the Event Calculus and execute the specification by means of a logic programming implementatio...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: IGPL
• Authors: Alexander Artikis, Marek J. Sergot
• Keywords: Formal Methods, IGPL 2010, Institutional Power, Multi-agent System, Specification