09121 Abstracts Collection -- Normative Multi-Agent Systems

From 15.03. to 20.03.2009, the Dagstuhl Seminar 09121 ``Normative Multi-Agent Systems \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general

Detection and resolution of normative conflicts in multi-agent systems : a literature survey

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Designing Normative Theories for Ethical and Legal Reasoning: LogiKEy Framework, Methodology, and Tool Support

A framework and methodology---termed LogiKEy---for the design and engineering of ethical reasoners, normative theories and deontic logics is presented. The overall motivation is the development of suitable means for the control and governance of intelligent autonomous systems. LogiKEy's unifying formal framework is based on semantical embeddings of deontic logics, logic combinations and ethico-legal domain theories in expressive classic higher-order logic (HOL). This meta-logical approach enables the provision of powerful tool support in LogiKEy: off-the-shelf theorem provers and model finders for HOL are assisting the LogiKEy designer of ethical intelligent agents to flexibly experiment with underlying logics and their combinations, with ethico-legal domain theories, and with concrete examples---all at the same time. Continuous improvements of these off-the-shelf provers, without further ado, leverage the reasoning performance in LogiKEy. Case studies, in which the LogiKEy framework and methodology has been applied and tested, give evidence that HOL's undecidability often does not hinder efficient experimentation.Comment: 50 pages; 10 figure

Severity-sensitive norm-governed multi-agent planning

This research was funded by Selex ES. The software developed during this research, including the norm analysis and planning algorithms, the simulator and harbour protection scenario used during evaluation is freely available from doi:10.5258/SOTON/D0139Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Desen: Specification of Sociotechnical Systems via Patterns of Regulation and Control

We address the problem of engineering a sociotechnical system (STS) with respect to its stakeholders’ requirements. We motivate a two-tier STS conception comprising a technical tier that provides control mechanisms and describes what actions are allowed by the software components, and a social tier that characterizes the stakeholders’ expectations of each other in terms of norms. We adopt agents as computational entities, each representing a different stakeholder. Unlike previous approaches, our framework, Desen, incorporates the social dimension into the formal verification process. Thus, Desen supports agents potentially violating applicable norms—a consequence of their autonomy. In addition to requirements verification, Desen supports refinement of STS specifications via design patterns to meet stated requirements. We evaluate Desen at three levels. We illustrate how Desen carries out refinement via the application of patterns on a hospital emergency scenario. We show via a human-subject study that a design process based on our patterns is helpful for participants who are inexperienced in conceptual modeling and norms. We provide an agent-based environment to simulate the hospital emergency scenario to compare STS specifications (including participant solutions from the human-subject study) with metrics indicating social welfare and norm compliance, and other domain dependent metrics

Resilience, reliability, and coordination in autonomous multi-agent systems

Acknowledgements The research reported in this paper was funded and supported by various grants over the years: Robotics and AI in Nuclear (RAIN) Hub (EP/R026084/1); Future AI and Robotics for Space (FAIR-SPACE) Hub (EP/R026092/1); Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA) Hub (EP/R026173/1); the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme; Trustworthy Autonomous Systems “Verifiability Node” (EP/V026801); Scrutable Autonomous Systems (EP/J012084/1); Supporting Security Policy with Effective Digital Intervention (EP/P011829/1); The International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences.Peer reviewedPostprin