Translating AUML Diagrams into Maude Specifications: A Formal Verification of Agents Interaction Protocols.

Abstract

Agents Interaction Protocols (AIPs) play a crucial role in multi-agents systems development. They allow specifying sequences of messages between agents. Major proposed protocols suffer from many weaknesses. We present, in this paper, a formal approach supporting the verification of agents' interaction protocols described by using AUML formalism. The considered AUML diagrams are formally translated into Maude specifications. Based on rewriting logic, the formal and object-oriented language Maude offers an interesting way for concurrent systems formal specification and programming. The Maude environment integrates a model-checker based on Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) supporting formal verification of distributed systems. The proposed approach essentially allows: (1) translating the description of agents' interactions, specified using AUML formalism, in a Maude specification and, (2) applying the model-checking techniques supported by Maude to verify some properties of the described system. A case study is presented to illustrate our approach.