Correctness Requirements for Multiagent Commitment Protocols

Abstract

Abstract. Commitments are a powerful abstraction for representing the interactions between agents. Commitments capture the content of the interactions declaratively and allow agents to reason about their actions. Recent work on multiagent protocols define agent interactions as the creation and manipulation of commitments to one another. As a result, commitment protocols can be executed flexibly, enabling the agents to cope with exceptions that arise at run time. We study the correctness requirements of commitment protocols that are necessary to ensure correct specification and coherent execution. We analyze and formalize various requirements for commitment protocols and draw relations among them. The main contribution of this analysis is that it allows protocol designers to develop correct protocols by signaling possible errors and inconsistencies that can possibly arise at run time. Since the requirements are formal, they can be incorporated in a software tool to automate the design and specification of commitment protocols.