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Agent communication and artificial institutions

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Viganò, Francesco ; Colombetti, Marco

In: Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2007, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 121-142

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    Title
    • Agent communication and artificial institutions
    Author
    • Fornara, Nicoletta. Università della Svizzera italiana, via G. Buffi 13, 6900, Lugano, Switzerland
    • Viganò, Francesco. Università della Svizzera italiana, via G. Buffi 13, 6900, Lugano, Switzerland
    • Colombetti, Marco. Università della Svizzera italiana, via G. Buffi 13, 6900, Lugano, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    Language
    • English
    Published in
    • Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2007, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 121-142. Kluwer Academic Publishers
    Other Version
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:317721
    Summary
    In this paper we propose an application-independent model for the definition of artificial institutions that can be used to define open multi-agent systems. Such a model of institutional reality makes us able also to define an objective and external semantics of a commitment-based Agent Communication Language (ACL). In particular we propose to regard an ACL as a set of conventions to act on a fragment of institutional reality, defined in the context of an artificial institution. Another contribution of the work presented in this paper is an operational definition of norms, a crucial component of artificial institutions. In fact in open systems interacting agents might not conform to the specifications. We regard norms as event-driven rules that when are fired by events happening in the system create or cancel a set of commitments. An interesting aspect of our proposal is that both the definition of the ACL and the definition of norms are based on the same notion of commitment. Therefore an agent capable of reasoning on commitments can reason on the semantics of communicative acts and on the system of norms