Parametric protocol-driven agents and their integration in JADE

In this paper we introduce “Template Global Types” which extend Constrained Global Types to support a more generic and modular approach to define protocols, meant as patterns of events of a given type. Protocols can be used both for monitoring the behavior of distributed computational entities and for driving it. In this paper we show the potential of Template Global Types in the domain of protocol-driven intelligent software agents. The interpreter for “executing” Template Global Types has a very natural implementation in Prolog which can easily implement the transition rules for moving from one state to another one, given that an event has been perceived (in case of monitoring) or generated for execution (in case of protocol-driven behavior). This interpreter has been integrated into the Jason logic-based agent framework with limited effort, thanks to the native support that Jason offers to Prolog. In order to demonstrate the flexibility and portability of our approach, which goes beyond the boundaries of logic-based frameworks, in this paper we discuss the integration of the protocol-driven interpreter into the JADE agent framework, entirely implemented in Java.