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International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems

EMAS 2021: Engineering Multi-Agent Systems pp 198–217Cite as

Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-agent Programming Contest

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13190))

Abstract

Communication is a critical part of enabling multi-agent systems to cooperate. This means that applying formal methods to protocols governing communication within multi-agent systems provides useful confidence in its reliability. In this paper, we describe the formal verification of a complex communication protocol that coordinates agents merging maps of their environment. The protocol was used by the LFC team in the 2019 edition of the Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC). Our specification of the protocol is written in Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), which is a well-suited approach to specifying agent communication protocols due to its focus on concurrent communicating systems. We validate the specification’s behaviour using scenarios where the correct behaviour is known, and verify that eventually all the maps have merged.

Work supported by UK Research and Innovation, and EPSRC Hubs for “Robotics and AI in Hazardous Environments”: EP/R026092 (FAIR-SPACE), EP/R026173 (ORCA), and EP/R026084 (RAIN). The formal specification work was mostly done while the first author was employed by the University of Manchester, UK.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://multiagentcontest.org/

  2. 2.

    http://jacamo.sourceforge.net/.

  3. 3.

    Note that events in CSP are different from Jason BDI events, the former are communication events while the latter are plan triggering events.

  4. 4.

    Source code of the team is available at (the main plans for the map merge protocol are located in “src/agt/strategy/identification.asl”): https://github.com/autonomy-and-verification-uol/mapc2019-liv.

  5. 5.

    A plan still has to succeed its context check (i.e., meet its preconditions) before being selected for execution.

  6. 6.

    The CSP files are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4624507.

  7. 7.

    Reported states from a check for freedom from non-determinism using FDR 4.2.7.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland

    Matt Luckcuck

  2. Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Rafael C. Cardoso

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  1. Matt Luckcuck
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  2. Rafael C. Cardoso
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Correspondence to Matt Luckcuck .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Natasha Alechina

  2. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni

  3. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Brian Logan

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Luckcuck, M., Cardoso, R.C. (2022). Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-agent Programming Contest. In: Alechina, N., Baldoni, M., Logan, B. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13190. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_12

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