Formal Verification of ALICA Multi-agent Plans Using Model Checking

Abstract

In multi-agent systems (MAS), plans consisting of sequences of actions are used to accomplish the team task. A critical issue for this approach is avoiding problems such as deadlocks and safety violations. Our recent work addresses that matter by verifying plans composed in a language called ALICA (A Language for Interactive Cooperative Agents) that controls the agents' behavior. The investigation is conducted by creating a translation tool that implements an algorithm for translating ALICA plans into the format used by the real-time model checker UPPAAL. We tested our concept using several cases, and the result is promising to get further insight on multi-agent model checking.