Stable Multi-agent Systems
Andrea Bracciali, Paolo Mancarella, Kostas Stathis, Francesca Toni · 2005
Abstract. We present an abstract declarative semantics for multi-agent systems based on the idea of stable set, and argue that it can be suit-ably employed to describe, and to some extent verify, the dynamics of complex systems of autonomous and heterogeneous interacting agents. We view agents as black-boxes, whose semantics is abstractly understood as an input-output transformation from the agents ' observations about their environment, to the actions they perform. Stable sets (of actions) characterise multi-agent systems able to reach an equilibrium point. Our semantics via stable sets takes into account the possibility that agents may fail. We illustrate how stability can characterise multi-agent systems by means of examples. We also draw considerations about how stable sets can be eectively approximated. 1