Formalizing and achieving multiparty agreements via commitments

ABSTRACT

Multiparty agreements often arise in a multiagent system where autonomous agents interact with each other to achieve a global goal. Multiparty agreements are traditionally represented by messaging protocols or event-condition-action rule sets in which agents exchange messages in a predefined sequence to ensure both global and local consistency. However, these models do not readily incorporate agents' autonomy and heterogeneity, which limits their ability to help build a flexible open system. Commitments have been studied for modelling various agent interactions. They have also been used as the key elements for formulating multi-party agreements and centralized approaches for resolving potential conflicts. This paper extends the above results by refining the formalizations and the existing protocols and proposing a decentralized protocol which is more efficient in resolving conflicts. It also introduces the concept of protocol safety, which ensures that agents not only interact efficiently but also correctly. This approach is geared toward constructing business processes where agents are mutually constraints in a manner that preserves their autonomy and heterogeneity.

REFERENCES

• 1: G. Economou, M. Tsvetovat, K. Sycara, and M. Paolucci. Implicit commitments through protocol-level semantics. In Proc. 2nd Workshop on Norms and Institutions in MAS, 2001.
• 2: BPEL. Business process execution language for web services, version 1.1, May 2003.
• 3: C. Castelfranchi. Commitments: From individual intentions to groups and organizations. In ICMAS, pages 41--48, 1995.
• 4: FIPA. FIPA interaction protocol specifications, 2003.
• 5: Jim Gray , Andreas Reuter, Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1992
• 6: Jiming Liu , Han Jing , Y. Y. Tang, Multi-agent oriented constraint satisfaction, Artificial Intelligence, v.136 n.1, p.101-144, March 2002 [doi>10.1016/S0004-3702(01)00174-6]
• 7: J. Odell, H. V. D. Parunak, and B. Bauer. Extending UML for agents. In AOIS 2000.
• 8: S. Parsons, M. Wooldridge, and L. Amgoud. Properties and complexity of formal inter-agent dialogues. Logic and Computation, 13(3):347--376, 2003.
• 9: M. P. Singh. Social and psychological commitments in multiagent systems. AAAI Fall Symposium on Knowledge and Action at Social and Organizational Levels, 104--106, 1991.
• 10: M. P. Singh. An ontology for commitments in multiagent systems: Toward a unification of normative concepts. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 7:97--113, 1999.
• 11: M. Tambe. Agent architectures for flexible, practical teamwork. In AAAI, pages 22--28, 1997.
• 12: Mahadevan Venkatraman , Munindar P. Singh, Verifying Compliance with Commitment Protocols, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, v.2 n.3, p.217-236, September 1999 [doi>10.1023/A:1010056221226]
• 13: Feng Wan , Munindar P. Singh, Commitments and causality for multiagent design, Proceedings of the second international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, July 14-18, 2003, Melbourne, Australia [doi>10.1145/860575.860696]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence
            Subjects: Multiagent systems

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.0 General

  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Verification

Keywords:
agents, agreements, commitments, multiagent systems