Modeling Multi-Agent Systems as Labeled Transitions Systems: A Unifying Approach

Abstract

In this paper, labeled transition systems are proposed as a unifying approach to deal with the semantics of a multi-agent system. The presented model represents a multi-agent system by a triplet consisting of a set of states, a set of actions and a set of all possible system executions. We argue that notions that appear with different and complex forms in the literature such as possible world semantics, Petri nets, and process calculus can be described in the same formal framework namely transition systems. Besides, the advantages related to the use of transition system based model are enumerated.