Discovery and Enactment of Declarative Interaction Protocols in Dynamically Open Settings

Andrei Ciortea, Kai Schultz, Amit K. Chopra, Ganesh Ramanathan

Keywords: Information Protocols, Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems, Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, Software Architecture

Abstract: We address the problem of enabling agents to interact flexibly in dynamically open settings where protocols, participants, and the deployment context must be discovered at run time. Our approach synthesizes two ideas. One, we leverage information protocols to enable flexible multi-agent interaction. Two, we use hypermedia-driven interaction to decouple agents from their deployment context. Agents use hypermedia for in-context discovery of protocol specifications and participants. Once a suitable protocol is found, agents use metaprotocols for dynamic role binding. Hypermedia controls then guide the enactment of interactions at run time. We demonstrate our approach in a scenario where agents start from a single entry URI to join an open marketplace, discover available items, protocols, buyers, and sellers, and successfully enact a protocol for buying/selling items. This demonstrates that integrating information protocols with hypermedia-driven interaction enables maximally flexible multi-agent coordination in dynamically open settings, such as the Web.

Area: Engineering and Analysis of Multiagent Systems (EMAS)

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Submission Number: 1659