Institutions in the OPAL multi-agent system

Issue title: MASOCR Workshop

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Nowostawski, Mariusz | Purvis, Martin | De Oliveira, Marcos | Cranefield, Stephen

Affiliations: Department of Information Science, University of Otago, P O Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: {mnowostawski, mpurvis, moliveira, scranefield}@infoscience.otago.ac.nz

Note: [] Corresponding author

Abstract: The management of interoperations among agents in an open multi agent system demands a robust organisation mechanism to look after the entire interaction process. In most multi-agent systems, agents communicate and coordinate their activities by sending messages representing particular communicative acts (or performatives). Agent communication languages must strike a balance between simplicity and expressiveness by defining a limited set of communicative act types that fit the communication needs of a wide set of problems. More complex requirements for particular problems are traditionally handled by defining domain-specific predicates and actions within ontologies. In this paper we argue that ontologies are primarily of practical use only within the domain of agent institutions, and we outline how institutions are modelled and used in the OPAL agent platform that we are developing. We also present and discuss the use of inter-agent commitments as a mechanism within institutions that promotes coordinated activity in organized multi agent societies. Our approach is designed to address the communication needs of multi-agent systems on multiple levels of abstraction, thus providing a general and robust framework for agent-oriented software engineering.

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 191-207, 2006