Designing Agent Communication Languages for Multi-agent Systems

摘要

To provide inter-operability between heterogeneous agents in open systems, a commonly understood agent communication language (ACL) is used. To ensure that it is commonly understood, a formal semantics for the ACL is required. In this paper, we explore ideas from the semantics of natual language dialogues for defining the meaning of ACL messages. Using a general semantic framework for characterising the semantics of a class of ACLs in terms of protocols, we introduce a method for designing an ACL for a particular application. We illustrate this idea with respect to a small ACL called sACL. The advantages of this approach are that the specification is considerably less complex and more general, the potential for interoperability is improved, and verification of compliance to the semantics is easier.