Object-Oriented Petri nets Based Architecture Description Language for Multi-agent Systems Manuscript revised January 29, 2006.

Abstract

To narrow the gap between multi-agent formal modeling and multi-agent practical systems, multi-agent systems (MAS) are studied from the point of view of software architecture. As the existing architecture description languages (ADLs) are not suitable for describing the semantics of MAS, a novel architecture description language for MAS (ADLMAS) rooted in BDI model is proposed, which adopts Object-Oriented Petri nets presented in this paper as a formal theory basis. ADLMAS is suitable for representing concurrent, distributed and synchronous MAS, and it is brought directly into the design phase and served as the high-level design for MAS implementation. ADLMAS can visually and intuitively depict a formal framework for MAS from the agent level and society level, describe the static and dynamic semantics, and analyze, simulate and validate MAS and interactions among agents with formal methods. To illustrate the favorable representation capability of ADLMAS, an example of multi-agent systems in electronic commerce is provided. Finally, the MAS model and its key behaviors properties are analyzed and verified. Key words: Multi-agent systems, software architecture, architectur