A Formal Graphical Language of Interdependence in Teamwork

Agents in teamwork may be highly interdependent on each other, and the awareness of interdependences is an important requirement for designing and consequently implementing a multiagent system. In this article, we propose a formal graphical and domain-independent language that can facilitate the identification of comprehensive interdependences among the agents in teamwork. Moreover, a formal semantics is also introduced to precisely express and explain the properties of a graphical structure. The novel feature of the graphical language is that it complements the Interdependence Analysis Color Scheme in a way that explicitly models negative influences and, in addition, provides a visual-communication aid for developers. To demonstrate the applicability and sufficiency of the graphical language in a variety of domains, our case studies include a multirobot scenario and a human-robot scenario.