The virtues of idleness: A decidable fragment of resource agent logic

Alternating Time Temporal Logic (ATL) is widely used for the verification of multi-agent systems. We consider Resource Agent Logic (RAL), which extends ATL to allow the verification of properties of systems where agents act under resource constraints. The model checking problem for RAL with unbounded production and consumption of resources is known to be undecidable. We review existing (un)decidability results for fragments of RAL, tighten some existing undecidability results, and identify several aspects which affect decidability of model checking. One of these aspects is the availability of a ‘do nothing’, or idle action, which does not produce or consume resources. Analysis of undecidability results allows us to identify a significant new fragment of RAL for which model checking is decidable.