ECOLANG - Communications Language for Ecological Simulations Network

This document ("ECOLANG_v_1_3c_Eng.doc") describes the communication language used in one multi-agent systems environment for ecological simulations, based on the EcoDynamo simulator application (Pereira and Duarte 2005) linked with several intelligent agents and visualisation applications and extends the initial definition of the language (Pereira et al. 2005). The agents' actions and perceptions are translated into messages exchanged with the simulator application and other agents. The concepts' definitions used follow the BNF notation (Backus et al. 1960) and it's inspired in the Coach Unilang language (Reis and Lau 2002). ECOLANG notation is an extension to the original BNF formalism adding the following meta-symbols: { } used for repetitive items (one or more times); [ ] encloses types of values; Terminal symbols use bold face letters.