A Calculus of Agents and Artifacts

A library-based extension of Java, the simpA framework, introduced a new abstraction based on agent-oriented concepts. Agents are autonomous entities that cooperate by exploiting artifacts, representing resources that are dynamically created and shared by agents. In this paper we present a core calculus integrating techniques coming from the area of concurrency and from OO programming. The syntax of the calculus with its static and dynamic semantics are introduced through an example. The calculus aims to foster the formalization (and proof) of type soundness of simpA programs and the development of techniques for analyzing the computational behaviour of agents and artifacts.