Contents

1.       The motivation: Why do we need formal specifications in the development of agent-based systems?

2.       The model underlying the SLABS language: What are agents and multi-agent systems?

3.       The syntax and semantics of the SLABS language: How are multi-agent systems specified in SLABS?

4.       Development of formal specifications in SLABS: How to develop a formal specification in SLABS?

5.       More Examples of formal specifications in SLABS: Is the language useful?

6.       Case study: Amalthaea – An evolutionary multi-agent ecosystem

7.  Scenario Calculus: Reasoning about the properties of multi-agent systems based on the formal specification in SLABS (This page is under-construction).

8.       The syntax of SLABS.

Publications

(To download papers, please visit Prof. Hong Zhu's Homepage at the URL: http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/HongZhu/)

Zhu, H., Formal Reasoning about emergent behaviour in MAS, Proceedings of SEKE’05, July 14~16, 2005. Taipei, pp280-285.

Zhu, H. and Shan, L., Agent-Oriented Modelling and Specification of Web Services, Proc. of  Tenth IEEE International Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2005) February 2-4, 2005, Sedona,  Arizona, USA, pp152-159.

Zhu, H., Zhou, B., Xinjun Mao, X., Shan, L. Duce, D., Agent-Oriented Formal Specification of Web Services, in Proc. of  International Workshop on Agents and Autonomic Computing and Grid Enabled Virtual Organizations (AAC-GEVO’2004) at the 3rd International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing (GCC’2004), Wuhan, China, 21-24 October 2004.

Zhu, H., A formal specification language for agent-oriented software engineering, in Proc. of AAMAS'2003, July, 2003, Melbourne, Australia, pp1174 – 1175. (An extended version of the paper is available as technical report DoC-TR-03-01, Department of Computing, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK, 2003)

Zhu, H., Formal Specification of Evolutionary Software Agents, Proc. ICFEM’2002, Shanghai, China, Oct. 2002,

 Zhu, H., Developing Formal Specifications of Multi-Agent Systems in SLABS -- A Case Study of Evolutionary Multi-Agent Ecosystem, Proc. of AOIS’2002 at AAMAS’02, Bologna, Italy, 16 July, 2002, pp20~34.

Zhu, H., SLABS: A Formal Specification Language for Agent-Based Systems, International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 11. No. 5, pp529~558.

 Zhu, H., The role of caste in formal specification of MAS, Proc. of PRIMA’2001, Springer LNCS 2132, Taipei, Taiwan, July 2001, pp1~15.

Zhu, H., A formal specification language for MAS engineering, Proc. of Second International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, May 29, 2001.

Zhu, H., Formal Specification of Agent Behaviour through Environment Scenarios, in FAABS 2000, First Goddard Workshop on Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, April 5-7, 2000, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, April 2000, Springer LNCS 1871, pp263-277