A concurrent system is a computer system with components that run in parallel and interact with each other. Such systems are ubiquitous and are notably responsible for supporting the infrastructure for transport, commerce and entertainment. They are very difficult to design and implement correctly: many different modeling languages and verification techniques have been devised to reason about them and verifying their correctness. However, existing languages and techniques can only express a limited range of systems and properties. In this dissertation, we address some of the shortcomings of established models and theories in four ways: by introducing a general modal logic, extending a modelling language with types and a more general operation, providing an automated tool support, and adapting an established behavioural type theory to specify and verify systems with unreliable communication. A modal logic for transition systems is a way of specifying properties of concurrent system abstractly. We have developed a modal logic for nominal transition systems. Such systems are common and include the pi-calculus and psi-calculi. The logic is adequate for many process calculi with regard to their behavioural equivalence even for those that no logic has been considered, for example, CCS, the pi-calculus, psi-calculi, the spi-calculus, and the fusion calculus. The psi-calculi framework is a parametric process calculi framework that subsumes many existing process calculi. We extend psi-calculi with a type system, called sorts, and a more general notion of pattern matching in an input process. This gives additional expressive power allowing us to capture directly even more process calculi than was previously possible. We have reestablished the main results of psi-calculi to show that the extensions are consistent. We have developed a tool that is based on the psi-calculi, called the psi-calculi workbench. It provides automation for executing the psi-calculi processes and generating a witness for a behavioural equivalence between processes. The tool can be used both as a library and as an interactive application. Lastly, we developed a process calculus for unreliable broadcast systems and equipped it with a binary session type system. The process calculus captures the operations of scatter and gather in wireless sensor and ad-hoc networks. The type system enjoys the usual property of subject reduction, meaning that well-typed processes reduce to well-typed processes. To cope with unreliability, we also introduce a notion of process recovery that does not involve communication. This is the first session type system for a model with unreliable communication.

The Internet and Web have brought in a new era of information sharing and opened up countless opportunities for people to rethink and redefine communication. With the development of network-related technologies, a Client/Server architecture has become dominant in the application layer of the Internet. Nowadays network nodes are behind firewalls and Network Address Translations, and the centralised design of the Client/Server architecture limits communication between users on the client side. Achieving the conflicting goals of data privacy and data openness is difficult and in many cases the difficulty is compounded by the differing solutions adopted by different organisations and companies. Building a more decentralised or distributed environment for people to freely share their knowledge has become a pressing challenge and we need to understand how to adapt the pervasive Client/Server architecture to this more fluid environment. This thesis describes a novel framework by which network nodes or humans can interact and share knowledge with each other through formal service-choreography specifications in a decentralised manner. The platform allows peers to publish, discover and (un)subscribe to those specifications in the form of Interaction Models (IMs). Peer groups can be dynamically formed and disbanded based on the interaction logs of peers. IMs are published in HTML documents as normal Web pages indexable by search engines and associated with lightweight annotations which semantically enhance the embedded IM elements and at the same time make IM publications comply with the Linked Data principles. The execution of IMs is decentralised on each peer via conventional Web browsers, potentially giving the system access to a very large user community. In this thesis, after developing a proof-of-concept implementation, we carry out case studies of the resulting functionality and evaluate the implementation across several metrics. An increasing number of service providers have began to look for customers proactively, and we believe that in the near future we will not search for services but rather services will find us through our peer communities. Our approaches show how a peer-to-peer architecture for this purpose can be obtained on top of a conventional Client/Server Web infrastructure.

La principal contribución de esta Tesis es la propuesta de un modelo de agente BDI graduado (g-BDI) que permita especificar una arquitetura de agente capaz de representar y razonar con actitudes mentales graduadas. Consideramos que una arquitectura BDI más exible permitirá desarrollar agentes que alcancen mejor performance en entornos inciertos y dinámicos, al servicio de otros agentes (humanos o no) que puedan tener un conjunto de motivaciones graduadas. En el modelo g-BDI, las actitudes graduadas del agente tienen una representación explícita y adecuada. Los grados en las creencias representan la medida en que el agente cree que una fórmula es verdadera, en los deseos positivos o negativos permiten al agente establecer respectivamente, diferentes niveles de preferencias o de rechazo. Las graduaciones en las intenciones también dan una medida de preferencia pero en este caso, modelan el costo/beneficio que le trae al agente alcanzar una meta. Luego, a partir de la representación e interacción de estas actitudes graduadas, pueden ser modelados agentes que muestren diferentes tipos de comportamiento. La formalización del modelo g-BDI está basada en los sistemas multi-contextos. Diferentes lógicas modales multivaluadas se han propuesto para representar y razonarsobre las creencias, deseos e intenciones, presentando en cada caso una axiomática completa y consistente. Para tratar con la semántica operacional del modelo de agente, primero se definió un calculus para la ejecución de sistemas multi-contextos, denominado Multi-context calculus. Luego, mediante este calculus se le ha dado al modelo g-BDI semántica computacional. Por otra parte, se ha presentado una metodología para la ingeniería de agentes g-BDI en un escenario multiagente. El objeto de esta propuesta es guiar el diseño de sistemas multiagentes, a partir de un problema del mundo real. Por medio del desarrollo de un sistema recomendador en turismo como caso de estudio, donde el agente recomendador tiene una arquitectura g-BDI, se ha mostrado que este modelo es valioso para diseñar e implementar agentes concretos. Finalmente, usando este caso de estudio se ha realizado una experimentación sobre la flexibilidad y performance del modelo de agente g-BDI, demostrando que es útil para desarrollar agentes que manifiesten conductas diversas. También se ha mostrado que los resultados obtenidos con estos agentes recomendadores modelizados con actitudes graduadas, son mejores que aquellos alcanzados por los agentes con actitudes no-graduadas. / The central contribution of this dissertation is the proposal of a graded BDI agent model (g-BDI), specifying an architecture capable of representing and reasoning with graded mental attitudes. We consider that making the BDI architecture more exible will allow us to design and develop agents capable of improved performance in uncertain and dynamic environments, serving other agents (human or not) that may have a set of graded motivations.In the g-BDI model, the agent graded attitudes have an explicit and suitable representation. Belief degrees represent the extent to which the agent believes a formula to be true. Degrees of positive or negative desires allow the agent to set di_erent levels of preference or rejection respectively. Intention degrees also give a preference measure but, in this case, modelling the cost/benefit trade off of achieving an agent's goal. Then, agents having different kinds of behaviour can be modelled on the basis of the representation and interaction of their graded attitudes. The formalization of the g-BDI agent model is based on Multi-context systems and in order to represent and reason about the beliefs, desires and intentions, we followed a many-valued modal approach. Also, a sound and complete axiomatics for representing each graded attitude is proposed. Besides, in order to cope with the operational semantics aspects of the g-BDI agent model, we first defined a Multi-context calculus for Multi-context systems execution and then, using this calculus we give this agent model computational meaning.Furthermore, a software engineering process to develop graded BDI agents in a multiagent scenario is presented. The aim of the proposed methodology is to guide the design of a multiagent system starting from a real world problem. Through the development of a Tourism recommender system, where one of its principal agents is modelled as a g-BDI agent, we show that the model is useful to design and implement concrete agents.Finally, using the case study we have made some experiments concerning the exibility and performance of the g-BDI agent model, demonstrating that this agent model is useful to develop agents showing varied and rich behaviours. We also show that the results obtained by these particular recommender agents using graded attitudes improve those achieved by agents using non-graded attitudes.

Les réseaux ad hoc dynamiques qui évoluent de manière non planifiée et imprévisible sont souvent étudiés en faisant l’hypothèse d’une composition et d’une topologie qui évoluent peu et relativement lentement. Il est alors possible de proposer dans ce contexte faiblement mobile des mécanismes (comme par exemple du routage, des infrastructures PKI, etc.) qui permettent aux applications conçues pour les réseaux statiques de continuer à fonctionner. Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse sont au contraire centrés sur lesréseaux ad hoc fortement dynamiques (iMANets). Les nœuds qui les constituent sont extrêmement mobiles et volatils, ce qui engendre des modifications incessantes et rapides de topologie. Les contributions principales de cette thèse sont (i) la définition d’une algèbre nommée CiMAN (Calculus for highly Mobile Ad hoc Networks) qui permet de modéliser les processus communicants dans ces réseaux ad hoc fortement mobiles, (ii) l’utilisation de cette algèbre pour prouver la correction d’algorithmes dédiés à ces réseaux, et (iii) unmiddleware et des applications de référence adaptés à ce contexte. / Mobile ad hoc networks that evolve in an unplanned and unpredictable mannerare often studied assuming that their composition and their topology evolve relatively slowly. In this context of weak mobility, it is then possible to propose mechanisms (such asrouting, Public Key Infrastructure, etc.) which make the application designed for a static context still operational. At the opposite, the work presented in this thesis focuses on highlymobile ad hoc networks (iMANets). The nodes of these networks are extremely mobile,bringing ceaseless and fast changes in the network topology. The main contributions of this thesis are (i) the definition of an algebra called CiMAN (Calculus for highly Mobile Adhoc Networks) which makes it possible to model communicating processes in these highly mobile ad hoc networks, (ii) the use of this algebra to prove the correctness of algorithms dedicated to these networks, and (iii) a middleware and reference applications specifically designed for this context.