MCMAS: A Model Checker for Multi-agent Systems

This paper presents mcmas, a model checker for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Differently from traditional model checkers, mcmas permits the automatic verification of specifications that use epistemic, correctness, and cooperation modalities, in addition to the standard temporal modalities. These additional modalities are used to capture properties of various scenarios (including communication and security protocols, games, etc.) that may be difficult or unnatural to express with temporal operators only; a small number of applications are presented in Section[4]. Agents are described in mcmas by means of the dedicated programming language ISPL (Interpreted Systems Programming Language). The approach is symbolic and uses ordered binary decision diagrams (obdds), thereby extending standard techniques for temporal logic to other modalities distinctive of agents. mcmas and all the examples presented in this paper are available for download [14] under the terms of the GPL license.