Requirements, Formal Verification and Model transformations of an Agent-based System: A CASE STUDY

One of the most challenging tasks in software specifications engineering for a multi-agent system is to ensure correctness. As these systems have high concurrency, often have dynamic environments, the formal specification and verification of these systems along with step-wise refinement from abstract to concrete concepts play major role in system correctness. Our objectives are the formal specification, analysis with respect to functional as well as non-functional properties by step-wise refinement from abstract to concrete specifications and then formal verification of these specifications. A multi-agent system is concurrent system with processes working in parallel with synchronization between them. We have worked on Gaia multi-agent method along with finite state process based finite automata techniques and as a result we have defined the formal specifications of our system, checked the correctness and verified all possible flow of concurrent executions of these specifications. Our contribution consists in transforming requirement specifications based on organizational abstractions into executable formal verification specifications based on finite automata. We have considered a case study of our multi-agent system to exemplify formal specifications and verification. Keywords: Multi-Agent System, Agent Models and Architecture, Gaia multi-agent method, Formal methods, Formal verification, Finite State Process (FSP), Labelled Transition System (LTS), Labelled Transition System Analyzer (LTSA), Safety property, Liveness propert

Agent collaboration in a multi-agent-system for analysis and optimization of mechanical engineering parts

In mechanical engineering, designers have to review a designed artefact iteratively with different domain experts, e.g. from manufacturing, to avoid later changes and find a robust, optimized design. To support the designer, knowledge-based engineering offers a set of approaches and techniques that formalize and implement engineering knowledge into generic product models or decision support systems. An implementation which satisfies especially the concurrent nature of today's design processes and allow for multi-objective decision-making is multi-agent systems. Such systems consist of entities that are capable of autonomous action, interact intelligently with their environment, communicate and collaborate. In this paper, such a multi-agent system is discussed as extension for a computer-aided design software where the agents take the role of domain experts, like e.g. manufacturing technologists and make suggestions for the optimization of the design of mechanical engineering parts. A focal point is set on the collaboration concept of the single agents. Therefore, the paper proposes the use of an action-item-list as central information and knowledge sharing platform. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Monitoring and control in scenario-based requirements analysis

Scenarios are an effective means for eliciting, validating and documenting requirements. At the requirements level, scenarios describe sequences of interactions between the software-to-be and agents in the environment. Interactions correspond to the occurrence of an event that is controlled by one agent and monitored by another.This paper presents a technique to analyse requirements-level scenarios for unforeseen, potentially harmful, consequences. Our aim is to perform analysis early in system development, where it is highly cost-effective. The approach recognises the importance of monitoring and control issues and extends existing work on implied scenarios accordingly. These so-called input-output implied scenarios expose problematic behaviours in scenario descriptions that cannot be detected using standard implied scenarios. Validation of these implied scenarios supports requirements elaboration. We demonstrate the relevance of input-output implied scenarios using a number of examples

Logic-Based Specification Languages for Intelligent Software Agents

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGoLog, Agent-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, DyLog, Concurrent METATEM and Ehhf. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.Comment: 67 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Accepted for publication by the Journal "Theory and Practice of Logic Programming", volume 4, Maurice Bruynooghe Editor-in-Chie

Coordination approaches and systems - part I : a strategic perspective

This is the first part of a two-part paper presenting a fundamental review and summary of research of design coordination and cooperation technologies. The theme of this review is aimed at the research conducted within the decision management aspect of design coordination. The focus is therefore on the strategies involved in making decisions and how these strategies are used to satisfy design requirements. The paper reviews research within collaborative and coordinated design, project and workflow management, and, task and organization models. The research reviewed has attempted to identify fundamental coordination mechanisms from different domains, however it is concluded that domain independent mechanisms need to be augmented with domain specific mechanisms to facilitate coordination. Part II is a review of design coordination from an operational perspective

funcX: A Federated Function Serving Fabric for Science

Exploding data volumes and velocities, new computational methods and platforms, and ubiquitous connectivity demand new approaches to computation in the sciences. These new approaches must enable computation to be mobile, so that, for example, it can occur near data, be triggered by events (e.g., arrival of new data), be offloaded to specialized accelerators, or run remotely where resources are available. They also require new design approaches in which monolithic applications can be decomposed into smaller components, that may in turn be executed separately and on the most suitable resources. To address these needs we present funcX---a distributed function as a service (FaaS) platform that enables flexible, scalable, and high performance remote function execution. funcX's endpoint software can transform existing clouds, clusters, and supercomputers into function serving systems, while funcX's cloud-hosted service provides transparent, secure, and reliable function execution across a federated ecosystem of endpoints. We motivate the need for funcX with several scientific case studies, present our prototype design and implementation, show optimizations that deliver throughput in excess of 1 million functions per second, and demonstrate, via experiments on two supercomputers, that funcX can scale to more than more than 130000 concurrent workers.Comment: Accepted to ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2020). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1908.0490