An Operational Semantics Dedicated to the Coordination of Cooperating Agents

Abstract. This paper presents a contribution towards rigourous reasoning about coordinating agents. First, it defines formal models for coordination and coordinating agents. These models enable to specify the relations between the concepts of: plan, plan proposal and resource allocation, on the one hand, and concepts of: knowledge, belief and capability, on the other hand. Second, it provides a structured coordination language enabling to specify primitives, protocols and processes of coordination. This language is defined by a precise syntax, and it is formally interpreted using a transition system leading to an operational semantics for coordinating agents