A Formal Methodology and Technique for Verifying Conversations in a Closed Multi-Agent System

As network bandwidth increases, distributed applications are becoming increasing lyprevalent. Systems using these applications are very complicated to build and must be dependable. Software agents are ideal for breaking complicated problems into manageable subtasks. Agent conversations, a series of messages passed between agents, are the cornerstone of multi-agent systems and must be deemed correct before being placed into service. The purpose of this research was to develop a formal methodology and technique to verify that the communication protocols defined in a multi-agent environment were valid. This was accomplished by examining agent conversations before deploying the system. An additional goal of this research was to develop a proof-of-concept module for agent Tool that automatically verified some of the important properties identified in this methodology.

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