Extending agent UML sequence diagrams

Agents in multiagent systems need to interact in order to exchange information, cooperate or coordinate. This interaction is frequently done through interaction protocols based on distributed system communication protocols. Communication protocols are not directly used due to many differences between agents and objects or processes such as autonomy and interaction [23] [28]. Designers use formal description techniques to represent their protocols. These formal description techniques are either those coming from distributed systems or those specifically tailored to agents. In the last category, Agent UML [24] is certainly one of the most known. This paper presents Agent UML sequence diagrams and addresses several new stereotypes.