Mapping OWL-S Processes to Multi Agent Systems: A Verification Oriented Approach

This paper generalises the theory of agent refinement from [1] to multi-agent systems in the presence of new coordination mechanisms extended with real time. The generalisation is such that refinement is compositional. This means that refinement at the individual level implies refinement at the multi-agent system level. Compositionality is an important property since it reduces heavily the verification process. Thus having a theory of refinement is a crucial step towards the verification of multi-agent systems' correctness.

During requirement specification process of software development activities, many existing systems or business process requirements have been captured using natural language or specialized tools such as UML. However, the capturing of informal requirements into formalized properties has not been taken into attention by software developers due to time and budget constraints. It is critical for the informally captured requirements to be formally specified in order to perform system verification. Formal verification checks whether a system model meets the formal specifications while validation checks whether the developed system fulfills its intended purpose. Therefore, in this paper, we present our studies of formal verification of multi agent system using model checking approach. We have utilized model checking tool in order to execute the formal verification procedures based on a particular basic theory to verify certain kind of properties of requirement specifications. We show an example of how model checking tool could support the verification of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) multi agent online application system and conclude that the propose model checking approach will benefit multi agent system.

This article describes first steps towards the formal specification and verification of multi-agent systems, through the use of temporal belief logics. The article first describes Concurrent METATEM, a multi-agent programming language, and then develops a logic that may be used to reason about Concurrent METATEM systems. The utility of this logic for specifying and verifying Concurrent METATEM systems is demonstrated through a number of examples. The article concludes with a brief discussion on the wider implications of the work, and in particular on the use of similar logics for reasoning about multi-agent systems in general.

A key problem in verification of multi-agent systems by model checking concerns the fact that the state-space of the system grows exponentially with the number of agents present. This often makes practical model checking unfeasible whenever the system contains more than a few agents. In this paper we put forward a technique to establish a cutoff result, thereby showing that systems with an arbitrary number of agents can be verified by checking a single system consisting of a number of agents equal to the cutoff of the system. While this problem is undecidable in general, we here define a class of parameterised interpreted systems and a parameterised temporal-epistemic logic for which the result can be shown. We exemplify the theoretical results on a robotic example and present an implementation of the technique as an extension of MCMAS, an open-source model checker for multi-agent systems.

We analyse the verification problem for synchronous, perfect recall multi-agent systems with imperfect information against a specification language that includes strategic and epistemic operators. While the verification problem is undecidable, we show that if the agents' actions are public, then verification is 2exptime-complete. To illustrate the formal framework we consider two epistemic and strategic puzzles with imperfect information and public actions: the muddy children puzzle and the classic game of battleships.

Verification of multi-agent systems is a challenging task due to their dynamic nature, and the complex interactions between agents. An example of such a system is the RoboCup Soccer Simulator, where two teams of eleven independent agents play a game of football against each other. In the present article we attempt to verify a number of properties of RoboCup football teams, using a methodology involving testing. To accomplish such testing in an efficient manner we use the McErlang model checker, as it affords precise control of the scheduling of the agents, and provides convenient access to the internal states and actions of the agents of the football teams.

The formalisation of rational agents is a topic of continuing interest in Artificial Intelligence. Research on this subject has held the limelight ever since the pioneering work of Moore [1980; 1984] in which knowledge and actions are considered. Over the years important contributions have been made on both informational aspects like knowledge and belief [Halpern and Moses, 1992; Meyer and van der Hoek, 1995], and motivational 1 aspects like commitments and obligations [Cohen, 1990]. Recent developments include the work on agent-oriented programming [Shoham, 1993; Thomas, 1993], the Belief-Desire-Intention architecture [Rao and Georgeff, 1991; Rao and Georgeff, 1991a; Rao and Georgeff, 1993], logics for the specification and verification of multi-agent systems [Wooldridge, 1994; Wooldridge and Fisher, 1992], logics for agents with bounded rationality [Huang, 1994; Huang et al., 1992], and cognitive robotics [Lesperance et al., 1994; Levesque, 1994].KeywordsRational AgentBelief RevisionKripke ModelDynamic LogicPropositional FormulaThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

A New Approach In Learning For Intelligent Multi Agent Systems

We propose an efficient method to detect conflicts, which may occur during the execution time of composite web services, based on model checking. The proposed method does not only check whether a composite service satisfies the correctness claims specified by a service developer, but it also detects any possible conflicts from the control and data flow of a composite service at the time of service development. The proposed method divides correctness claims into four types depending on their application time: pre/post-condition, policy, and assumption. Specifically, composite services and correctness claims are modelled by OWL-S and SWRL, respectively. The proposed method automatically converts the control and data flow of an OWLS composite service and the correctness claims into Promela code and LTL formulas, which are given as the input of a SPIN model checker. Experimental results under real-world scenarios show that the proposed method detects conflicts in composite web services effectively.

This chapter has the goal of showing how multi-agent systems can be a suitable means for supporting the development and the composition of services in dynamic and complex environments. In particular, the chapter copes with the problem of developing services in the field of social networks. After an introduction on the relationships between multi-agent systems, services, and social networks, the chapter describes how multi-agent systems can support the interaction and the collaboration among the members of a social network through a set of active services.

We report on a novel approach to (semi-)automatically compile and verify contract-regulated service compositions implemented as multi-agent systems. We model web service behaviours and the contracts governing them as WSBPEL specification. We use the formalism of temporal-epistemic logic, suitably extended to deal with compliance/violations of contracts, to specify properties of service compositions. We compile the WSBPEL behaviours into a specialised system description language ISPL, to be used with the model checker MCMAS to verify the behaviours automatically. We illustrate these concepts using a motivating example whose state space is approximately 106 and discuss experimental results.

Strategic management provides an overall direction to the enterprise and plays an important role in the resource utilization by specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives. IT projects always create for the achievement of the organization strategy. The linkage between the organization strategy and software project is needed to conform the alignment between them. This research proposed mapping rules for UML use case and activity diagram construction used for software requirements modelling using the result of the B-SCP analysis framework as an input. A prototype of a supporting is also developed to serve the proposed mapping rules application. The case study for Loan Origination System of Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives is presented to show how to apply the proposed mapping rule.

The paper deals with the multiagent systems for the power system topology verification. Two of such multiagent systems are considered. The idea of topology verification utilized in each of them allows considering the topology verification of a whole power system as the set of many local verification processes. Each of the described multiagent systems performs the topology verification over a different protocol. Types of agent defined for these systems are different. For each of the considered multiagent systems, analysis and design are outlined using the Multiagent Systems Engineering. For their design models, the performance evaluation has been carried out. Then, a comparison of the investigated multiagent systems is made, paying special attention to their performance effectiveness.Keywordsmodelingmultiagent systeminteraction protocolsimulationpower system topology verificationperformance evaluation

Recently, the popular logical frameworks on strategy specification and verification in the multi-agent concurrent systems, such as alternating-time temporal logic and Strategy Logic (SL), mainly focus on the strategic abilities of one coalition. In them, the notion of strategy is just viewed as a pure syntax and/or semantics object, we cannot represent or reason about the internal structures of strategies, let alone strategic abilities under these ones. In this paper, based on linear dynamic logic, by extending SL, we propose a new strategic logic, named Dynamic Strategy Logic (DSL), which includes the existential/ universal quantification operators about regular expressions with test expressions. By introducing action atoms, we can specify both the evolution of time and structured strategies by means of regular expressions. Hence, in this logic, we can represent and reason about much more expressive strategic abilities under structured strategies of coalitions, and prove that DSL is more expressive than SL.

The ambient intelligence consists of the integration of computer science technologies in the objects of the environment around us in order to create a smart one. Each object in the environment performs a different service as part of achieving a task. The adaptive Service composition is a context-aware system used in the situation where the user’s needs cannot be satisfied by a single service but by the combination of several ones. One of the main and principal characteristics of ambient environments is the adaptability to the context. The multi-agent systems with their characteristics of autonomy, proactivity, mobility and sociability are one of the most promising techniques of service composition and they became a major and significant paradigm for developping ambient systems. In this paper, we present a model of adaptive service composition in ambient environment based on multi-agent system named Multi Agent System for Adaptive Service Composition (MAS-ASC). To each object of the environment is associated an agent. The set of the agents coordinate their competences taking into account the context in order to perform an activity. MAS-ASC is based on the Contract Net Protocol in which the agents exchange their proposals in the form of call for proposal. It is implemented on Java Agent DEvelopment framework platform and has been tested to economize the consumption of energy in an intelligent lighting system example.