State space reduction for model checking agent programs

Sung Shik T.Q. Jongmans*, Koen V. Hindriks, M. Birna Van Riemsdijk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

State space reduction techniques have been developed to increase the efficiency of model checking in the context of imperative programming languages. Unfortunately, these techniques cannot straightforwardly be applied to agents: the nature of states in the two programming paradigms differs too much for this to be possible. To resolve this, we adapt core definitions on which existing reduction algorithms are based to agents. Moreover, the framework that we introduce is such that different reduction algorithms can be defined in terms of the same relations. This is beneficial because it enables the reuse of code and reduces computation time when different techniques are used simultaneously. Specifically, we adapt and combine two known techniques: property-based slicing and partial order reduction. We exemplify our work with the Goal agent programming language, and implement the theory that we present for Goal. Several experiments with this implementation show that performance is in line with known results from traditional model checking.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProgramming Multi-Agent Systems - 9th International Workshop, ProMAS 2011, Revised Selected Papers
Pages133-154
Number of pages22
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event9th International Workshop on ProgrammingMulti-Agent Systems, ProMAS 2011 - Taipei, Taiwan, Province of China
Duration: 3 May 20113 May 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume7217 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference9th International Workshop on ProgrammingMulti-Agent Systems, ProMAS 2011
Country/TerritoryTaiwan, Province of China
CityTaipei
Period3/05/113/05/11

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'State space reduction for model checking agent programs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this