Ideally, open multi-agent systems (MAS) involve heterogeneous and autonomous agents whose interactions ought to conform to some shared conventions. The challenge is how to express and enforce such conditions so that truly autonomous agents can adscribe to them. One way of addressing this issue is to look at MAS as environments regulated by some sort of normative framework. There have been significant contributions to the formal aspects of such normative frameworks, but there are few proposals that have made them operational. In this paper a possible step towards closing that gap is suggested. A normative language is introduced which is expressive enough to represent the familiar types of MAS-inspired normative frameworks; its implementation in JESS is also shown. This proposal is aimed at adding flexibility and generality to electronic institutions by extending their deontic components through richer types of norms that can still be enforced on-line.
Abstract. Norms constitute a powerful coordination mechanism among heterogeneous agents. In this paper, we propose means to specify and explicitly manage the normative positions of agents (permissions, prohibitions and obligations), with which distinct deontic notions and their relationships can be captured. Our rule-based formalism includes constraints for more expressiveness and precision and allows the norm-oriented programming of electronic institutions: normative aspects are given a precise computational interpretation. Our formalism has been conceived as a machine language to which other higher-level normative languages can be mapped, allowing their execution, as we illustrate with a selection of examples from the literature.
Norms constitute a powerful coordination mechanism among heterogeneous agents. We propose means to specify and explicitly manage the normative positions of agents (permissions, prohibitions and obligations), with which distinct deontic notions and their relationships can be captured. Our rule-based formalism includes constraints for more expressiveness and precision and allows the norm-oriented programming of electronic institutions: normative aspects are given a precise computational interpretation. Our formalism has been conceived as a machine language to which other higher-level normative languages can be mapped, allowing their execution.
Norms are widely recognised as a means of coordinating multi-agent systems. The distributed management of norms is a challenging issue and we observe a lack of truly distributed computational realisations of normative models. In order to regulate the behaviour of autonomous agents that take part in multiple, related activities, we propose a normative model, the Normative Structure (NS), an artifact that is based on the propagation of normative positions (obligations, prohibitions, permissions), as consequences of agents' actions. Within a NS, conflicts may arise due to the dynamic nature of the MAS and the concurrency of agents' actions. However, ensuring conflict-freedom of a NS at design time is computationally intractable. We show this by formalising the notion of conflict, providing a mapping of NSs into Coloured Petri Nets and borrowing well-known theoretical results from that field. Since online conflict resolution is required, we present a tractable algorithm to be employed distributedly. We then demonstrate that this algorithm is paramount for the distributed enactment of a NS.
Agent-mediated electronic institutions belong to a new and promising field where interactions between a group of agents are regulated by means of a set of explicit norms. Current implementations of such open-agent systems are, however, mostly using constraints on the behaviour of the agents, thereby severely limiting the autonomy of the agents. To increase the autonomy of agents and possibly boost the efficiency of the overall system, a more flexible norm enforcement is required. However, as norms make extensive use of vague and ambiguous concepts and lack operational meaning (not expressing how the norm should be enforced), translating norms for usage with such a flexible enforcement mechanism might be difficult. In this paper we propose an extension to electronic institutions to allow for a flexible enforcement of norms, and manners to help overcome the difficulties of translating abstract norms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.