Social Relationships for Designing Agent Interaction in JADE

Abstract—Current agent platforms do not provide agents the means for reasoning about expected behaviours during interactions. This lack is due to the absence of design primitives to explicitly shape interaction patterns as first-class resources. This work presents 2COMM4JADE, a framework based on JADE and CArtAgO platforms that allows definition of social relationships among parties, represented by social commitments, decoupled from the agent design itself. I

Typing Multi-Agent Systems via Commitments

Abstract. This work presents an agent typing system, that differently than most of other proposals relies on notions that are typical of agent systems instead of relying on a functional approach. Specifically, we use commitments to define types. The proposed typing includes a notion of compatibility, based on subtyping, which allows for the safe substitution of agents to roles along an interaction that is ruled by a commitment-based protocol. Type checking can be done dynamically when an agent enacts a role. The proposal is implemented in the 2COMM framework and exploits Java annotations. 2COMM is based on the Agent & Artifact meta-model, exploit JADE and CArtAgO, by using CArtAgO artifacts in order to reify commitment protocols

Programming JADE and Jason Agents Based on Social Relationships Using a Uniform Approach

Abstract. Interaction is an essential feature in multiagent systems. De-sign primitives are needed to explicitly model desired patterns. This work presents 2COMM as a framework for defining social relations among parties, represented by social commitments. Starting from the definition of interaction protocols, 2COMM allows to decouple interaction design from agent design. Currently, adapters were developed for allowing the use of 2COMM with the JADE and the JaCaMo platforms. We show how agents for the two platforms can be implemented by relying on a common programming schema

Towards Aggregate Processes in a Field Calculus-Based Platform

Aggregate programming è un paradigma promettente che vuole spostare il modo di vedere i sistemi distribuiti da una visione locale dei singoli device ad una visione aggregata. Il comportamento viene definito trattando il sistema nell'insieme come una singola entità, mentre le interazioni fra singoli diventa implicita. Tuttavia, il comportamento delle entità in sistemi distribuiti adattivi complessi potrebbe cambiare nel tempo per via di politiche di self-organization. In questo scenario, si creano dei gruppi dinamici di entità con l'obiettivo di raggiungere determinati risultati. Un processo aggregato identifica un insieme di azioni che ogni entità di un gruppo deve eseguire. Il lavoro svolto in questa tesi discute nel dettaglio il concetto di Aggregate process applicato ad aggregate computing. Un framework basato su aggregate programming e field calculus, chiamato scafi, è utilizzato per fornire una implementazione per Aggregate processes. Come prova di concetto, vengono presentate delle librerie che implementano modelli di coordinazione recenti. In particolare, i modelli in questione sono Spatial tuples, un modello basato sullo spazio di tuple in cui le tuple hanno una posizione fisica nello spazio, e Replicated gossip, una versione migliorata dei classici protocolli di gossip in cui sono utilizzate delle replicazioni basate sul tempo

Flexible autonomy and context in human-agent collectives

Human-agent collectives (HACs) are collaborative relationships between humans and software agents that are formed to meet the individual and collective goals of their members. In general, different members of a HAC should have differing degrees of autonomy in determining how a goal is to be achieved, and the degree of autonomy that should be enjoyed by each member of the collective varies with context. This thesis explores how norms can be used to achieve context sensitive flexible autonomy in HACs. Norms can be viewed as defining standards of ideal behaviour. In the form of rules and codes, they are widely used to coordinate and regulate activity in human organisations, and more recently they have also been proposed as a coordination mechanism for multi-agent systems (MAS). Norms therefore have the potential to form a common framework for coordination and control in HACs. The thesis develops a novel framework in which group and individual norms are used to specify both the goal to be achieved by a HAC and the degree of autonomy of the HAC and/or of its members in achieving a goal. The framework allows members of a collective to create norms specifying how a goal should (or should not) be achieved, together with sanctions for non-compliance. These norms form part of the decision making context of both the humans and agents in the collective. A prototype implementation of the framework was evaluated using the Colored Trails test-bed in a scenario involving mixed human-agent teams. The experiments confirmed that norms can be used for coordination of HACs and to facilitate context related flexible autonomy

Flexible autonomy and context in human-agent collectives

Human-agent collectives (HACs) are collaborative relationships between humans and software agents that are formed to meet the individual and collective goals of their members. In general, different members of a HAC should have differing degrees of autonomy in determining how a goal is to be achieved, and the degree of autonomy that should be enjoyed by each member of the collective varies with context. This thesis explores how norms can be used to achieve context sensitive flexible autonomy in HACs. Norms can be viewed as defining standards of ideal behaviour. In the form of rules and codes, they are widely used to coordinate and regulate activity in human organisations, and more recently they have also been proposed as a coordination mechanism for multi-agent systems (MAS). Norms therefore have the potential to form a common framework for coordination and control in HACs. The thesis develops a novel framework in which group and individual norms are used to specify both the goal to be achieved by a HAC and the degree of autonomy of the HAC and/or of its members in achieving a goal. The framework allows members of a collective to create norms specifying how a goal should (or should not) be achieved, together with sanctions for non-compliance. These norms form part of the decision making context of both the humans and agents in the collective. A prototype implementation of the framework was evaluated using the Colored Trails test-bed in a scenario involving mixed human-agent teams. The experiments confirmed that norms can be used for coordination of HACs and to facilitate context related flexible autonomy

Coordinated constraint relaxation using a distributed agent protocol

The interactions among agents in a multi-agent system for coordinating a distributed, problem solving task can be complex, as the distinct sub-problems of the individual agents are interdependent. A distributed protocol provides the necessary framework for specifying these interactions. In a model of interactions where the agents' social norms are expressed as the message passing behaviours associated with roles, the dependencies among agents can be specified as constraints. The constraints are associated with roles to be adopted by agents as dictated by the protocol. These constraints are commonly handled using a conventional constraint solving system that only allows two satisfactory states to be achieved - completely satisfied or failed. Agent interactions then become brittle as the occurrence of an over-constrained state can cause the interaction between agents to break prematurely, even though the interacting agents could, in principle, reach an agreement. Assuming that the agents are capable of relaxing their individual constraints to reach a common goal, the main issue addressed by this thesis is how the agents could communicate and coordinate the constraint relaxation process. The interaction mechanism for this is obtained by reinterpreting a technique borrowed from the constraint satisfaction field, deployed and computed at the protocol level.The foundations of this work are the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) and the distributed partial Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). LCC is a distributed interaction protocol language, based on process calculus, for specifying and executing agents' social norms in a multi-agent system. Distributed partial CSP is an extension of partial CSP, a means for managing the relaxation of distributed, over-constrained, CSPs. The research presented in this thesis concerns how distributed partial CSP technique, used to address over-constrained problems in the constraint satisfaction field, could be adopted and integrated within the LCC to obtain a more flexible means for constraint handling during agent interactions. The approach is evaluated against a set of overconstrained Multi-agent Agreement Problems (MAPs) with different levels of hardness. Not only does this thesis explore a flexible and novel approach for handling constraints during the interactions of heterogeneous and autonomous agents participating in a problem solving task, but it is also grounded in a practical implementation

Spatial Tuples nel mondo reale: il caso di Unity e Google Maps

Spatial Tuples è un modello di coordinazione tuple-based fortemente basato sul concetto di posizione fisica nel mondo e sul movimento di un componente situato all'interno dello spazio reale. Il mondo dei videogiochi si muove con sempre più convinzione verso situazioni ludiche in cui i concetti di spazio e movimento si pongono come pilastri su cui strutturare il game design e la filosofia di gioco. Questa tesi si pone come obiettivo quello di riprodurre il più fedelmente possibile il modello Spatial Tuples all'interno del Game Engine Unity, utilizzando le astrazioni e i meccanismi offerti dal motore di gioco. Si ritiene, infatti, che i due mondi possano offrire grandi vantaggi, l'uno all'altro. Portando Spatial Tuples in Unity, si possono ottenere possibilità di interazioni potenti ed espressive fra oggetti. Portando Unity in Spatial Tuples, si offre un supporto tecnologico costantemente sviluppato e all'avanguardia, spinto dagli investimenti di un'industria in forte salute e crescita