The pragmatics of software agents:: Analysis and design of agent communication languages

Modern ACLs, such as FIPA ACL, provide standardised catalogues of performatives and protocols, designed as general purpose languages to ensure interoperability among agent systems. However, recent work reports a need for new ad-hoc sets of performatives and protocols in certain contexts, showing that FIPA ACL does not support adequately all relevant types of interactions. In this paper we first present a formal model that relates performatives and protocols to the organisation of MAS. Then, a principled method for the design of the ACL of a particular MAS is developed, which accounts for both, reusability and expressiveness. Finally, we illustrate our approach by an example in the domain of agent-based decision support for bus fleet management.