Verifying time, memory and communication bounds in systems of reasoning agents

Alechina, Natasha; Logan, Brian; Nga, Nguyen Hoang; Rakib, Abdur

Abstract

We present a framework for verifying systems composed of heterogeneous reasoning agents, in which each agent may have differing knowledge and inferential capabilities, and where the resources each agent is prepared to commit to a goal (time, memory and communication bandwidth) are bounded. The framework allows us to investigate, for example, whether a goal can be achieved if a particular
agent, perhaps possessing key information or inferential capabilities, is unable (or unwilling) to contribute more than a given portion of its available computational resources or bandwidth to the problem. We present a novel temporal epistemic logic, BMCL, which allows us to describe a set of reasoning agents with bounds on time, memory and the number of messages they can exchange. The bounds on memory and communication are expressed as axioms in the logic. As an example, we show how to axiomatize a system of agents which reason using resolution and prove that the
resulting logic is sound and complete. We then show how to encode a simple system of reasoning agents specified in BMCL in the description language of a model checker, and verify that the agents can achieve a goal only if they are prepared to commit certain time, memory and communication resources.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2008)
• Start Date: May 12, 2008
• End Date: May 16, 2008
• Acceptance Date: Dec 19, 2007
• Publication Date: May 12, 2008
• Deposit Date: Jun 16, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 736-743
• Keywords: formalisms and logics
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1012531
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1402326
• Related Public URLs: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1402326
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : The Seventh International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems
• Contract Date: Jun 16, 2017