International audienceA Multiagent System (MAS) that explicitly represents its organization normally focuses either on the functioning or the structure of this organization. However, addressing both aspects is a prolific approach when one wants to design or describe a MAS organization. The problem is to define these aspects in such a way that they can be both assembled in a single coherent specification. The ℳOISE + model -- described here through a soccer team example -- intends to be a step in this direction since the organization is seen under three points of view: structural, functional, and deontic

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) has evolved towards the specification of global constraints that heterogeneous and autonomous agents are supposed to follow when concerning open systems. A subset of these constraints is known as the MAS organisation. This article describes a set of computational tools that supports the development and the programming of such systems. At the system level, it is provided a middleware which ensures that all agents will follow the organisational constraints. At the agent level, the AgentSpeak language is extended, using Jason features, so that the agents can perceive and act upon the organisation they belong.

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International audienceThis paper proposes an organizational model for a multi- agent system. This model is based on three major concepts: the roles which constrain the individual behaviors of the agents, the organizatio- nal links that regulate the social exchanges between these agents and the groups which constrain the layout of agents involved in strong in- teractions. This model is illustrated throughout the exploration and the management of the administrative tasks of an educational master trai- ning with intelligent agent assistants

In this paper, we present an abstract structure called dependence graph, an extension of the notion of dependence network, as proposed in [16]. While this latter can be applied to express a set of dependence relations of a single agent, this new structure can be applied to the multi-agent case. It can be used, therefore, for the study of emerging social structures, such as groups and collectives, and may form a knowledge base for managing complexity in both competitive and organisational or other cooperative contexts. We analyze several properties of this structure, relating them to some corresponding social phenomena regarding group formation and cohesiveness.

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We understand a socio-technical system (STS) as a cyber-physical system in which two or more autonomous parties interact via or about technical elements, including the parties’ resources and actions. As information technology begins to pervade every corner of human life, STSs are becoming ever more common, and the challenge of governing STSs is becoming increasingly important. We advocate a normative basis for governance, wherein norms represent the standards of correct behaviour that each party in an STS expects from others. A major benefit of focussing on norms is that they provide a socially realistic view of interaction among autonomous parties that abstracts low-level implementation details. Overlaid on norms is the notion of a sanction as a negative or positive reaction to potentially any violation of or compliance with an expectation. Although norms have been well studied as regards governance for STSs, sanctions have not. Our understanding and usage of norms is inadequate for the purposes of governance unless we incorporate a comprehensive representation of sanctions.We address the aforementioned gap by proposing (i) a sanction typology that reflects the relevant features of sanctions, and (ii) a conceptual sanctioning process model providing a functional structure for sanctioning in STS. We demonstrate our contributions via a motivating scenario from the domain of renewable energy trading.