Typing Multi-Agent Systems via Commitments

Abstract. This work presents an agent typing system, that differently than most of other proposals relies on notions that are typical of agent systems instead of relying on a functional approach. Specifically, we use commitments to define types. The proposed typing includes a notion of compatibility, based on subtyping, which allows for the safe substitution of agents to roles along an interaction that is ruled by a commitment-based protocol. Type checking can be done dynamically when an agent enacts a role. The proposal is implemented in the 2COMM framework and exploits Java annotations. 2COMM is based on the Agent & Artifact meta-model, exploit JADE and CArtAgO, by using CArtAgO artifacts in order to reify commitment protocols

Standard Type Soundness for Agents and Artifacts

Formal models, core calculi, and type systems, are important tools for rigorously stating the more subtle details of a language, to characterise and study its features and the correctness properties of its programs. In this paper we present {FsimpAL} (FsimpaALlong), a formal calculus modelling the agent and artifact program abstractions provided by the simpA{} agent framework. The formalisation is largely inspired by textsc{Featherweight Java}. It is based on reduction rules applied at certain evaluation contexts, properly adapted to the concurrency nature of simpA{}. On top of this calculus we introduce a standard type system and prove its soundness, so as to guarantee that the execution of a well-typed program does not get stuck. Namely, all primitive mechanisms of agents (activity execution), artifacts (field/property access and step execution), and their interaction (observation and invocation) are guaranteed to be used in a way that is structurally compliant with the corresponding definitions: hence, there will not be run-time errors due to {FsimpAL} distinctive primitives

Typing Multi-agent Programs in simpAL

Typing is a fundamental mechanism adopted in mainstream programming languages, important in particular when developing programs of a certain complexity to catch errors at compile time, before executing a program, and to improve the overall design of a system. In this paper we introduce typing also in agent-oriented programming, by using a novel agent programming language called simpAL, which has been conceived from scratch to have this feature