Communication protocols as first-class components of multiagent systems

Communication protocols are widely recognised as essential to an efficient coordination among agents. Accordingly, this paper proposes to consider protocols as first-class entities, so that an agent that wants to initiate a conversation creates an instance of the appropriate protocol, called a Moderator, in charge of managing this conversation. Then, agents intending to take part in the conversation send their communication actions to the Moderator, which guarantees the respect of the protocol´s rules. Cooperative Objects, a high-level Petri net language, may be used to specify, validate and implement Moderators. From a software engineering point of view, the resulting MAS architecture features many advantages