Interaction Protocols: From AUML to Social Commitments, from Artifacts to BSPL

Matteo Baldoni; Cristina Baroglio; Roberto Micalizio

doi:10.1007/978-3-032-22940-3_4

Interaction Protocols: From AUML to Social Commitments, from Artifacts to BSPL

Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Roberto Micalizio

Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini (eds.)

The Agents Journey: Twenty-Five Years of Multi-agent Systems, chapter 4, pages 105–126

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (State-of-the-Art Survey) 16395

Springer Nature Switzerland

April 2026

This chapter surveys the contributions of the WOA workshop series to the area of interaction protocols for communicating agents. Interaction protocols are among the main means for agent coordination, and have drawn the attention of many researchers within the WOA community, and internationally, since the effectiveness and scalability of a distributed systems may strongly depend on how interacting protocols are specified and implemented.The chapter reviews the diverse approaches in literature starting from message passing, with protocol specifications in FIPA ACL, KQML, and AUML, and implementations in well-known platforms and systems like Jason, JADE and SARL. Then, the chapter explores the alternative approaches relying on the environment as a means of coordination, and briefly introduces proposals such as CArtAgO and JaCaMo. Environments allow the realization of agent organizations, where MOISE is particularly important since it is also representative of normative multi-agent organizations. Specifically, in organizations, agents are expected to abide by the rules encoded by the interaction protocols. Consequently, great attention was posed to a priori conformance verification and to monitoring the run-time behavior of the agents. Social approaches have then emerged as an alternative solution to the specification of an organization. We briefly survey social commitments and their use for defining interaction protocols, and some proposal for introducing them in agent platforms. More recently, the focus has shifted to the information that is exchanged, leading to the proposal of information-based interaction protocols.

keywords Interaction Protocols, Social Commitments, Artifacts, Agent Platforms, Verification and Monitoring

journal or series

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)

container publication

The Agents Journey (edited volume, 2026) — Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini

companion publication

Preface (editorial/introduction/preface, 2026) — Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini

Evolution of Programming Languages in Agent Systems and the Role of Computational Logic (book chapter, 2026) — Alina Vozna, Andrea Monaldini, Stefania Costantini, Giovanni De Gasperis, Pierangelo dell’Acqua, Andrea Formisano, Andrea Rafanelli

Looking for the Best Partners (book chapter, 2026) — Domenico Rosaci, Giuseppe M. L. Sarnè

Trust Evolution in Agent and Multi-agent Systems: A Computational Modeling Perspective (book chapter, 2026) — Alessandro Sapienza, Filippo Cantucci, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Rino Falcone

Coordination of Software Agents: Models and Languages (book chapter, 2026) — Giacomo Cabri, Letizia Leonardi, Stefano Mariani, Franco Zambonelli

Self-organisation with Aggregate Computing: A Reflection Under the Lenses of Multi-agent Systems Engineering (book chapter, 2026) — Gianluca Aguzzi, Roberto Casadei, Danilo Pianini, Mirko Viroli

Rethinking Software Agents as Building Blocks of Software Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Federico Bergenti, Stefania Monica

Designing Agent-Oriented Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Massimo Cossentino, Luca Sabatucci, Valeria Seidita

Agent-Based Computing for Science and Engineering: Back to the Future and Beyond... (book chapter, 2026) — Alfredo Garro

Simulation and Agent-Based Simulation at WOA: 25 of Years of Simulation-Related Contributions, and an Outlook of What Awaits Us (book chapter, 2026) — Giuseppe Vizzari, Daniela Briola

25 Years of Declarative Agent Technologies in Italy (book chapter, 2026) — Davide Ancona, Daniela Briola, Angelo Ferrando, Maurizio Martelli, Viviana Mascardi

Intelligent Agents from Symbolic to Neurosymbolic Systems: The Quest for Integration (book chapter, 2026) — Andrea Agiollo, Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Matteo Magnini, Andrea Omicini, Federico Sabbatini

From Objects to Agents, and Back to Smart Objects: Software Agents for Intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Daniel-Costel Bouleanu, Marco Loaiza, Claudio Savaglio, Costin Bădică, Raffaele Gravina, Giancarlo Fortino

AI Infrastructure: From Gigastructure to Edge Intelligence with Multi-Agent Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Andrea Omicini, Alessandro Ricci, Viviana Mascardi

works as

companion publication for