A Model-Driven Approach for Executing Modular Interaction Protocols Using BDI-Agents

To achieve interoperability between systems belonging to distributed organizations, a mechanism to rule how they interact with each other, without loosing their autonomy and keeping communication as flexible as possible, is necessary. In Multi-Agent Systems, interaction protocols were invented for this purpose. Simple UML-like diagrams have been used, focusing mostly in the specification of the sequence in which messages can be exchanged and who they can be sent to. Relevant details have been left out, making these models easy to understand for the reader, but at the same time less flexible, reusable, machine readable and hard to use for automatic development where more insights on the semantics of the model are necessary. We propose a declarative and more expressive model which makes use of well known contributions of the area of Multi-Agents. Adding more details inevitably increases complexity and to deal with it, we propose a model-driven tool. The tool is composed two parts, one is a graphical editor, which visualizes the semantics and effects of the definitions made by the designer, in real time and using planing algorithms. The other is an automatic code generator that produces Jadex BDI agents. Models created using our tool are more expressive, reusable, modular and can be used in automated development.