Formal development of multi-agent interaction protocols

Today, multi-agent systems will play a key role in the development of twenty-first century computer systems. The construction of agents and their interactions should integrate theories, methodologies and tools. In this paper, we propose a single unifying framework for developing interaction protocols in multi-agent systems. This framework, which is based on formal methods, supports almost all aspects of agent interaction. This paper also shows the use of formal methods to specify, simulate and verify agent interaction protocols.