Abstract
Interaction protocols play a fundamental role in multi-agent systems.
In this work, after analysing the trends that are emerging not only from research
on multi-agent interaction protocols but also from neighbouring fields, like research
on workflows and business processes, we propose a novel definition of
commitment-based interaction protocols, that is characterized by the decoupling
of the constitutive and the regulative specifications and that explicitly foresees
a representation of the latter based on constraints among commitments. A clear
distinction in the two representations has many advantages, that are explained in
the paper, mainly residing in a greater openness of multi-agent systems, and an
easier re-use of protocols and of action definitions. A language, named 2CL, for
writing regulative specifications is also given.