Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries

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

Università della Svizzera italiana

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

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...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Representation and monitoring of commitments and norms using OWL

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Colombetti, Marco

In: AI communications, 2010, vol. 23, no. 4, p. 341-356

Monitoring the temporal evolution of obligations and prohibitions is a crucial aspect in the design of open interaction systems. In this paper we regard such obligations and prohibitions as cases of social commitment with starting points and deadlines, and propose to model them in OWL, the logical language recommended by the W3C for SemanticWeb applications. In particular we propose an...

Università della Svizzera italiana

A commitment-based approach to agent communication

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Colombetti, Marco

In: Applied artificial intelligence, 2004/18/9/10/853-866

In this paper we propose an operational method for the definition of the semantics of Agent Communication Languages based on the notion of social commitment. Our proposal is suitable for open interaction frameworks where agents, designed by independent constructors, dynamically enter and leave different interaction systems. In this type of environments it is crucial to define a standard and...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Formal specification of artificial institutions using the event calculus

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Colombetti, Marco

The specification of open interaction systems, which may be dynamically entered and left by autonomous agents, is widely recognized to be a crucial issue in the development of distributed applications on the internet. The specification of such systems involves two main problems: the first is the definition of a standard way of specifying a communication language for the interacting agents and...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Artificial institutions : a model of institutional reality for open multiagent systems

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Viganò, Francesco ; Verdicchio, Mario ; Colombetti, Marco

In: Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2008, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 89-105

Software agents' ability to interact within different open systems, designed by different groups, presupposes an agreement on an unambiguous definition of a set of concepts, used to describe the context of the interaction and the communication language the agents can use. Agents' interactions ought to allow for reliable expectations on the possible evolution of the system; however, in open...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Agent communication and institutional reality

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Viganò, Francesco ; Colombetti, Marco

In this paper we propose to regard an Agent Communication Language (ACL) as a set of conventions to act on a fragment of institutional reality, defined in the context of an artificial institution. Within such an approach, we first reformulate a previously proposed commitment-based semantics for ACLs. In particular we show that all commonly used types of communicative acts can be defined in terms...

Università della Svizzera italiana

An operational approach to norms in artificial institutions

Viganò, Francesco ; Fornara, Nicoletta ; Colombetti, Marco

The notion of artificial institution is crucial for the specification of open and dynamic interaction frameworks where heterogeneous and autonomous agents can interact to face problems in various fields, like for instance electronic commerce, business-to-business (B2B) applications, and personal assistant applications. In our view the specification of artificial institutions requires a clear...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Artificial institutions : a model of institutional reality for open multiagent systems

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Viganò, Francesco ; Verdicchio, Mario ; Colombetti, Marco

Software agents’ ability to interact within different open systems, designed by different groups, presupposes an agreement on an unambiguous definition of a set of concepts, used to describe the context of the interaction and the communication language the agents can use. Agents’ interactions ought to allow for reliable expectations on the possible evolution of the system; however, in open...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Interaction and communication among autonomous agents in multiagent systems

Fornara, Nicoletta ; Colombetti, Marco (Dir.) ; Gambardella, Luca Maria (Codir.)

Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2003 ; 2003COM002.

The main goal of this doctoral thesis is to investigate a fundamental topic of research within the Multiagent Systems paradigm: the problem of defining open, heterogeneous, and dynamic interaction frameworks. That is to realize interaction systems where multiple agents can enter and leave dynamically and where no assumptions are made on the internal structure of the interacting agents. Such topic...