Communicating open systems

  • Authors:

  • Mark dInverno;Michael Luck;Pablo Noriega;Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar;Carles Sierra

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;Department of Informatics, Kings College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom;Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, IIIA-CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain;Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, IIIA-CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain;Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, IIIA-CSIC, Spanish National Research Council, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Just as conventional institutions are organisational structures for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting individuals, electronic institutions provide a computational analogue for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting software agents. In this paper, we argue that open multi-agent systems can be effectively designed and implemented as electronic institutions, for which we provide a comprehensive computational model. More specifically, the paper provides an operational semantics for electronic institutions, specifying the essential data structures, the state representation and the key operations necessary to implement them. We specify the agent workflow structure that is the core component of such electronic institutions and particular instantiations of knowledge representation languages that support the institutional model. In so doing, we provide the first formal account of the electronic institution concept in a rigorous and unambiguous way.