Formalising dynamic protocols for open agent systems

ABSTRACT

Multi-agent systems where the members are developed by parties with competing interests, and where there is no access to a member's internal state, are often classified as 'open'. The specification of open agent systems of this sort is largely seen as a design-time activity. Moreover, there is no support for run-time specification modification. Due to environmental, social, or other conditions, however, it is often required to revise the specification during the system execution. To address this requirement, we present an infrastructure for 'dynamic' specifications, that is, specifications that may be modified at run-time by the agents. The infrastructure consists of well-defined procedures for proposing a modification of the 'rules of the game' as well as decision-making over and enactment of proposed modifications. We employ the action language C+ to formalise dynamic specifications, and the 'Causal Calculator' implementation of C+ to execute the specifications. We illustrate our infrastructure by presenting a dynamic specification of a resource-sharing protocol.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.0 General

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.1 Applications and Expert Systems
          Subjects: Law

General Terms:
Design