Constraint rule-based programming of norms for electronic institutions

Peer reviewedPostprin

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

Peer reviewedPostprin

Contract Formation through Preemptive Normative Conflict Resolution

Publisher PD

The Current State of Normative Agent-Based Systems

Recent years have seen an increase in the application of ideas from the social sciences to computational systems. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in the domain of multiagent systems. Because multiagent systems are composed of multiple individual agents interacting with each other many parallels can be drawn to human and animal societies. One of the main challenges currently faced in multiagent systems research is that of social control. In particular, how can open multiagent systems be configured and organized given their constantly changing structure? One leading solution is to employ the use of social norms. In human societies, social norms are essential to regulation, coordination, and cooperation. The current trend of thinking is that these same principles can be applied to agent societies, of which multiagent systems are one type. In this article, we provide an introduction to and present a holistic viewpoint of the state of normative computing (computational solutions that employ ideas based on social norms.) To accomplish this, we (1) introduce social norms and their application to agent-based systems; (2) identify and describe a normative process abstracted from the existing research; and (3) discuss future directions for research in normative multiagent computing. The intent of this paper is to introduce new researchers to the ideas that underlie normative computing and survey the existing state of the art, as well as provide direction for future research.Norms, Normative Agents, Agents, Agent-Based System, Agent-Based Simulation, Agent-Based Modeling

Using the event calculus for tracking the normative state of contracts

In this work, we have been principally concerned with the representation of contracts so that their normative state may be tracked in an automated fashion over their deployment lifetime. The normative state of a contract, at a particular time, is the aggregation of instances of normative relations that hold between contract parties at that time, plus the current values of contract variables. The effects of contract events on the normative state of a contract are specified using an XML formalisation of the Event Calculus, called ecXML. We use an example mail service agreement from the domain of web services to ground the discussion of our work. We give a characterisation of the agreement according to the normative concepts of: obligation, power and permission, and show how the ecXML representation may be used to track the state of the agreement, according to a narrative of contract events. We also give a description of a state tracking architecture, and a contract deployment tool, both of which have been implemented in the course of our work.

Electronic institution : an e-contracting platform for virtual organization

Automated tools that assist contract drafting are mostly focused on the representation of contract documents. Multi-agent systems have been ap-plied in the e-business domain, namely for information discovery and contract negotiation. Work on contract monitoring and enforcement is less explored. In this paper we start from these two observations to expose our efforts towards the development of tools that enable the computational representation of con-tracts and furthermore their monitoring and enforcement. We are mostly inter-ested in Virtual Organization settings, where groups of agents representing dif-ferent business entities form consortiums that must be regulated by appropriate norms. We are pursuing the concept of an Electronic Institution as a platform providing a normative environment and a set of e-contracting related services. Within this environment, contracts are represented through norms. We intend to test the applicability of our approach through illustration with case-studies and comparison with other contract representation formalisms

Embodied Organizations: a Unifying Perspective in Programming Agents, Organizations and Environments

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-627/coin_7.pdfInternational audienceMAS research pushes the notion of openness related to systems combining heterogeneous computational entities. Typically, those entities answer to different purposes and functions and their integration is a crucial issue. Starting from a comprehensive approach in developing agents, organizations and environments, this paper devises an integrated approach and describes a unifying programming model. It introduces the notion of embodied organization, which is described first focusing on the main entities as separate concerns; and, second, establishing different interaction styles aimed to seamlessly integrate the various entities in a coherent system. An integration framework, built on top of Jason, CArtAgO and Moise (as programming platforms for agents, environments and organizations resp.) is described as a suitable technology to build embodied organizations in practice

07122 Abstracts Collection -- Normative Multi-agent Systems

From 18.03.07 to 23.03.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07122 ``Normative Multi-agent Systems\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. 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. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available