Results 1 - 10
of
20
Behavior-oriented Commitment-based Protocols
- Proc. of 19th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2010
, 2010
"... Abstract. Ever since the seminal work of Searle, two components of interaction protocols have been identified: constitutive rules, defining the meaning of actions and regulative rules, defining the flow of execution, i.e. the behavior the agent should show. The two parts together define the meaning ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 26 (13 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Ever since the seminal work of Searle, two components of interaction protocols have been identified: constitutive rules, defining the meaning of actions and regulative rules, defining the flow of execution, i.e. the behavior the agent should show. The two parts together define the meaning of the interaction. Commitment-based protocols, however, usually do not account for the latter and, when they do it, they do not adopt a decoupled representation of the two parts. A clear distinction in the two representations would, however, bring many advantages, mainly residing in a greater openess of multiagent systems, an easier re-use of protocols and of action definitions, and a finer specification of protocol properties. In this work we introduce the notion of behavior-oriented commitment-based protocols, which account both for the constitutive and the regulative specifications and that explicitly foresee a representation of the latter based on constraints among commitments. A language, named 2CL, for writing regulative specifications is also given. 1
Verifiable Semantic Model for Agent Interactions using Social Commitments
- 6039 of LNCS
, 2010
"... Abstract. Existing approaches about defining formal semantics of commitment usually consider operations as axioms or constrains on top of the commitment semantics, which fail to capture the meaning of interactions that are central to real-life business scenarios. Furthermore, existing semantic frame ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 15 (4 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Existing approaches about defining formal semantics of commitment usually consider operations as axioms or constrains on top of the commitment semantics, which fail to capture the meaning of interactions that are central to real-life business scenarios. Furthermore, existing semantic frameworks using different logics do not gather the full semantics of commitment operations and semantics of social commitments within the same framework. This paper develops a novel unified semantic model for social commitments and their operations. It proposes a logical model based on a new logic extending CTL ∗ with commitments and operations to specify agent interactions. We also propose a new definition of assignment and delegation operations by considering the relationship between the original and new commitment contents. We prove that the proposed model satisfies some properties that are desirable when modeling agent interactions in MASs and introduce a NetBill protocol as a running example to clarify the automatic verification of this model. Finally, we present an implementation and report on experimental results of this protocol using the NuSMV and MCMAS symbolic model checkers.
Commitment-based Protocols with Behavioral Rules and Correctness Properties of MAS
- In Proc. of International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, DALT 2010
, 2010
"... Abstract. Commitment-based interaction protocols are a flexible way of representing the interaction of a set of agents, that is well-known and widely accepted by the research community. Normally these protocols consist of sets of actions with a shared meaning. From the point of view of an agent, how ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 12 (7 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Commitment-based interaction protocols are a flexible way of representing the interaction of a set of agents, that is well-known and widely accepted by the research community. Normally these protocols consist of sets of actions with a shared meaning. From the point of view of an agent, however, the meaning of an action is completed by the context in which it is used: the context shapes the behavior of the agent in that the agent decides which actions to take depending on it. Indeed, since the seminal work of Searle (supported by other authors), two components of interaction protocols have been identified, constitutive rules and regulative rules, which altogether define the meaning of the interaction. Commitment-based protocols usually do not account for the latter. In this work we introduce a representation that explicitly includes regulative rules as constraints on commitments and, in the light of the work by Singh and Chopra [36], report the first steps in the analysis of the advantages brought by such introduction. 1
Constraints among Commitments: Regulative Specification of Interaction Protocols
- In Proc. of International Workshop on Agent Communication, AC 2010, held in conjuction with AAMAS 2010
, 2010
"... Abstract. Interaction protocols play a fundamental role in multi-agent systems. In this work, after analysing the trends that are emerging not only from research on multi-agent interaction protocols but also from neighbouring fields, like research on workflows and business processes, we propose a no ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 8 (6 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Interaction protocols play a fundamental role in multi-agent systems. In this work, after analysing the trends that are emerging not only from research on multi-agent interaction protocols but also from neighbouring fields, like research on workflows and business processes, we propose a novel definition of commitment-based interaction protocols, that is characterized by the decoupling of the constitutive and the regulative specifications and that explicitly foresees a representation of the latter based on constraints among commitments. A clear distinction in the two representations has many advantages, that are explained in the paper, mainly residing in a greater openness of multi-agent systems, and an easier re-use of protocols and of action definitions. A language, named 2CL, for writing regulative specifications is also given. 1
Reactive event calculus for monitoring global computing applications
- In Logic Programs, Norms and Action
, 2012
"... Abstract. In 1986 Kowalski and Sergot proposed a logic-based formal-ism named Event Calculus (EC), for specifying in a declarative manner how the happening of events affects some representation (the state) of the world. Since its introduction, EC has been recognized for being an excellent framework ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 5 (3 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. In 1986 Kowalski and Sergot proposed a logic-based formal-ism named Event Calculus (EC), for specifying in a declarative manner how the happening of events affects some representation (the state) of the world. Since its introduction, EC has been recognized for being an excellent framework to reason about time and events. Recently, with the advent of complex software systems decomposed into sets of autonomous, heterogeneous distributed entities, EC has drawn attention as a viable solution for monitoring them, where monitoring means to represent their state and how events dynamically affect such state. In this work we present the fundamentals of a reactive and logic-based version of EC, named REC, for monitoring declarative properties, while maintaining a solid formal background. We present some results about its formal as well as practical aspects, and discuss how REC has been applied to a variety of application domains, namely BPM, SOC, CGs and MAS. We also highlight some key issues required by the monitoring task, and finally discuss how REC overcomes such issues.
Cupid: Commitments in relational algebra
- In Proceedings of the AAAI
, 2015
"... We propose Cupid, a language for specifying commitments that supports their information-centric aspects, and offers cru-cial benefits. One, Cupid is first-order, enabling a systematic treatment of commitment instances. Two, Cupid supports features needed for real-world scenarios such as deadlines, n ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 5 (3 self)
- Add to MetaCart
We propose Cupid, a language for specifying commitments that supports their information-centric aspects, and offers cru-cial benefits. One, Cupid is first-order, enabling a systematic treatment of commitment instances. Two, Cupid supports features needed for real-world scenarios such as deadlines, nested commitments, and complex event expressions for cap-turing the lifecycle of commitment instances. Three, Cupid maps to relational database queries and thus provides a set-based semantics for retrieving commitment instances in states such as being violated, discharged, and so on. We prove that Cupid queries are safe. Four, to aid commitment modelers, we propose the notion of well-identified commitments, and finitely violable and finitely expirable commitments. We give syntactic restrictions for obtaining such commitments. 1
P.: Monitoring Time-Aware Social Commitments with Reactive Event Calculus
- Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium “From Agent Theory to Agent Implementation” (AT2AI-7
, 2010
"... Despite their dynamic nature, social commit-ments have been rarely used for monitoring purposes, and few attention has been paid to the relationship between commitments and the temporal dimension and to the corre-sponding run-time verification. Building on previous work, we present a declarative ax- ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 3 (3 self)
- Add to MetaCart
Despite their dynamic nature, social commit-ments have been rarely used for monitoring purposes, and few attention has been paid to the relationship between commitments and the temporal dimension and to the corre-sponding run-time verification. Building on previous work, we present a declarative ax-iomatization of time-aware social commit-ments, extending their basic life cycle with time-related transitions and with compensa-tion mechanisms. The formalization is based on a reactive version of the Event Calculus, which supports the monitoring of the com-mitments evolution during a system’s execu-tion, checking if the interacting agents are honoring them or not. 1
A Retrospective on the Reactive Event Calculus and Commitment Modeling Language
"... Abstract. Social commitments in time: Satisfied or compensated was the title of a presentation given at the 7th DALT workshop edition [34] in which we proposed a layered architecture for modeling and reason-ing about social commitments. We gave emphasis to modularity and to the need of accommodating ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 3 (2 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Social commitments in time: Satisfied or compensated was the title of a presentation given at the 7th DALT workshop edition [34] in which we proposed a layered architecture for modeling and reason-ing about social commitments. We gave emphasis to modularity and to the need of accommodating certain temporal aspects in order for a com-mitment modeling framework to be flexible enough to adapt to diverse commitment theories, and expressive enough to model realistic scenar-ios. We grounded the framework on two formalisms: the Reactive Event Calculus (REC) and the Commitment Modeling Language (CML). In this retrospective, we review recent developments of this line of work, and discuss our contribution in a broader context of related research. 1 A Short Introduction to REC and CML Social commitments are a well-known concept in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) research [8, 31]. They are commitments made from an agent to another agent to bring about a certain property. In broad terms, a social commitment represents
Fuzzy conformance checking of observed behaviour with expectations
- in AI*IA 2011
"... Abstract. In some different research fields a research issue has been to establish if the external, observed behaviour of an entity is conformant to some rules/spec-ifications/expectations. Research areas like Multi Agent Systems, Business Pro-cess, and Legal/Normative systems, have proposed differe ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 3 (1 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. In some different research fields a research issue has been to establish if the external, observed behaviour of an entity is conformant to some rules/spec-ifications/expectations. Research areas like Multi Agent Systems, Business Pro-cess, and Legal/Normative systems, have proposed different characterizations of the same problem, named as the conformance problem. Most of the available systems, however, provide only simple yes/no answers to the conformance issue. In this paper we introduce the idea of a gradual conformance, expressed in fuzzy terms. To this end, we present a system based on a fuzzy extension of Drools, and exploit it to perform conformance tests. In particular, we consider two aspects: the first related to fuzzy ontological aspects, and the second about fuzzy time-related aspects. Moreover, we discuss how to conjugate the fuzzy contribu-tions from these aspects to get a single, fuzzy score representing a conformance degree.
