Specifying and Verifying Distributed Intelligence Systems

This paper describes rst steps towards the formal speciica-tion and veriication of Distributed Artiicial Intelligence (DAI) systems, through the use of temporal belief logics. The paper rst describes Concurrent MetateM, a programming language for DAI, and then develops a logic that may be used to reason about Concurrent MetateM systems. The utility of this logic for specifying and verifying Concurrent MetateM systems is demonstrated through a number of examples. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the wider implications of the work, and in particular on the use of similar logics for reasoning about DAI systems in general.