Using UML Statecharts with Knowledge Logic Guards

Abstract

This paper describes an extension of UML statecharts, called K-statechart, suitable for the formal specification, modeling, and runtime verification of system behavior that depends on knowledge and belief in distributed multi-agent systems. With K-statecharts, statechart transition guards allow the use of knowledge-logic formulae, a form of modal logic used for reasoning about multi-agent systems. We demonstrate the proposed formalism using an example of a multi-agent system that consists of three traffic-light controllers. We also describe a newly developed K-statechart code generator that is part of the StateRover Eclipse-IDE plug-in for statechart-based modeling and formal specification.

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