International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Ó World Scientific Publishing Company
A METHODOLOGY FOR MODELING MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS USING NESTED PETRI NETS LILY CHANG and XUDONG HE School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA
[email protected] [email protected] SOL M. SHATZ Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, 851 S. Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA
[email protected]
In the past two decades, multi-agent systems have emerged as a new paradigm for conceptualizing large and complex distributed software systems. Even though there are many conceptual frameworks for using multi-agent systems, there is no well established and widely accepted method for the representation of multi-agent systems. We adapt a well-known formal model, predicate transition nets, to include the notions of dynamic structure, agent communication and coordination to address the representation problems. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for modeling multiagents based on the extensions. We demonstrate our modeling approach with an example. Several case studies on different application domains from our previous works are also discussed. Keywords: Petri nets; multi-agent systems; agent-oriented modeling.
1. Introduction Multi-agent systems (MAS) [48] have been intensively studied in the distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) community to address distributed problem solving [15] that involves the collective efforts of multiple agents. There are two major motivations for distributed problem solving: (1) utilizing distributed resources concurrently in order to speed up a problem solving process; and (2) integrating problem solving capabilities that are geographically distributed when a centralized approach is not possible. The research topics were primarily on distributed planning and coordination in which the concerns were on system-wide coherence and conflict controls over resources. In the last two decades, however, MAS has emerged as a paradigm in the software engineering community for structuring complex systems running in an open computing environment. Many research activities have been conducted to develop the languages, methodologies and tools for conceptualizing complex systems based on the MAS view. Previous works in this regard were centered on agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) [25], with focus on the following research topics: (1) requirements engineering; (2) design, specification and verification techniques; (3) ontologies; (4) generic agent models and
A Methodology for Modeling Multi-Agent Systems using Nested Petri Nets
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R(PumpDiesel) = a1[1]=r[1]רr[2]=truckרr[5]=1רd’=d-1רg=1רN!g; R(PumpRegular) = a1[1]=r[1]רr[2]=sedanרr[5]=1רr’=r-1רg=1רN!g; R(Fail) = r[5]=0רN!cr; R (GetDiesel) = N?ds ݀ רᇱ ൌ ݀ ݀;ݏ R(GetRegular) = N?rs ݎ רᇱ ൌ ݎ ;ݏݎ R(OrderDiesel ) =݀ ൏ ͳ רN!1; R(OrderRegular) = ݎ൏ ͳ רN!2; R(drive_in) = R (drive_out) =ߣ; M0(in_station) = {, }; M0(parked) =Ǣ M0(waiting) = ; M0(pumped) = ;M0(bank_agent) = {}; M0(gas_producer_agent) = {}; M0(pumping_station) = {, , }; M0(credit_card) = ; M0(diesel_gas) = {}; M0(regular_gas) = {}; F and L are as seen in the Fig. 13(c). Acknowledgments We thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments for improving the presentation of this paper. This work was partially supported by NSF grants HRD0833093, and Dissertation Year Fellowship from the University Graduate School at Florida International University in Miami. References [1] H. Barringer, M. Fisher, D. Gabbay, G. Gough and R. Owens, METATEM: A Framework for Programming in Temporal Logic, Proceedings on Stepwise Refinement of Distributed Systems: Models, Formalisms, Correctness. LNCS, Vol. 430, pp.94-129. [2] B. Bauer: Extending UML for the Specification of Interaction Protocols. Submission for 6th the Call for Proposal of FIPA and revised version of FIPA-99. [3] B. Bauer, J. P. Muller, J. Odell: Agent UML: A Formalism for Specifying Multi-agent Interaction, LNCS Vol. 1957, pp. 109-120, Springer 2001. [4] F. Bergenti, M.-P. Gleizes and F. Zambonelli: Eds. Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems: The Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Handbook, Volume 11. Springer-Verlag, 2004. [5] P. Bresciani, P. Giorgini, F. Giunchiglia, J. Mylopoulos, A. Perini: TROPOS: An AgentOriented Software Development Methodology. In Journal of Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems. May 2004. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [6] L. Cabac, M. Duvigneau, D. Moldt, H. Rolke: Modeling Dynamic Architectures Using NetsWithin-Nets, Application and Theory of Petri Nets 2005, LNCS 3536, pp.148-167, SpringerVerlag. [7] L. Cabac, D. Moldt: Formal Semantics for AUML Agent Interaction Protocol Diagram, LNCS Vol. 3382, pp. 47-61, Springer-Verlag 2005. [8] R. Cervenka and I. Trencansky: The Agent Modeling Language-AML: A Comprehensive Approach to Modeling Multi-Agent Systems, Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2007. [9] L. Chang, J. Ding, X. He, S. Shatz: A Formal Approach for Modeling Software Agents Coordination, Communication of SIWN, Vol. 3, 2008, pp.58-64. [10] L. Chang, X. He, J. Lian, and S. Shatz: "Applying a Nested Petri Net Modeling Paradigm to Coordination of Sensor Networks with Mobile Agents", Proceeding of Workshop on Petri Nets and Distributed Systems 2008, Xian, China, June, 2008, pp.132-145.
