Automatic Protocol Generation Based on Commitment Machines
Yeo Huang-Yu Daren · 2004
Traditional approaches for software agents to represent interaction protocols in open systems, such as FSM, Petri-Nets and AUML result in rigid and heavily constrained protocols. This is due to the fact that the resulting protocols contain only legal sequences of actions. However, in an open and uncertain environment, protocols need to be flexible so as to handle different scenarios that might occur. The development of the Commitment Machine framework allows for flexible specification of protocols. It defines a high level concept of using commitments to govern the execution of agent actions. This is done by attaching meaningful content to each protocol state and action, instead of representing them as just state transitions or message exchange. Previous work represent and implement the commitment machine framework using the Event Calculus, by supplying the specified commitment machine protocol to an event calculus planner, which then works out the alternative protocol runs. However, the generated protocol runs are only available for reference but not for execution. This is because the protocol runs are not integrated with the agents involved. The outcome of this project is to enable the successful execution of the commitment framework by agents. This is done by integrating the CM reasoning framework with JACK Intelligent Agent Language for automatic protocol generation and execution. Two approaches were taken for the implementation and compared: JACK Agents method and JACK Teams Method. As a result of the comparison, JACK Teams prove to be a better method of implementation as its framework is more suitable for the realization of commitment machine protocols.