A normative framework for agent-based systems

One of the key issues in the computational representation of open societies relates to the introduction of norms that help to cope with the heterogeneity, the autonomy and the diversity of interests among their members. Research regarding this issue presents two omissions. One is the lack of a canonical model of norms that facilitates their implementation, and that allows us to describe the processes of reasoning about norms. The other refers to considering, in the model of normative multi-agent systems, the perspective of individual agents and what they might need to effectively reason about the society in which they participate. Both are the concerns of this paper, and the main objective is to present a formal normative framework for agent-based systems that facilitates their implementation. F. López y López is researcher of the Computer Science Faculty at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in México, from where she got her first degree. She also gained a MSc in Computation from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. She is leading several theoretical and practical projects that use multi-agent systems as the main paradigm. Her research has been focused on Autonomous Normative Agents and Normative Multi-Agent Systems and she has published over 20 articles in these and related topics. M. Luck is Professor of Computer Science in the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, where he carries out research into the theory and practice of agent technology. He has published over 150 articles in these and related areas, both alone and in collaboration with others, and has published eight books. He is a member of the Executive Committee of AgentLink III, the European Network of Excellence for Agent-Based Computing. He is a co-founder of the European Multi-Agent Systems workshop series, is co-founder and Chair of the steering committee of the UK Multi-Agent Systems Workshops (UKMAS), and was a member of the Management Board of Agentcities.NET. Professor Luck is also a steering committee member for the Central and Eastern European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems. He is series editor for Artech House’s Agent Oriented Systems series, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, and ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. M. d’Inverno gained a BA in Mathematics and an MSc in Computation both from Oxford University. He also was awarded a PhD from University College London. He joined the University of Westminster in 1992 as a Lecturer, became a senior lecturer in 1998, a reader in 1999 and was appointed professor of computer science in 2001. He is interested in formal, principled approaches to modelling both natural and artificial systems in a computational setting. The main strand to this research, focuses on the application of formal methods in providing models of intelligent agent and multi-agent systems. His approach has sought to take a structured approach to the development of practical agent systems from theoretical models. He has published over 70 articles in these areas and has published four books and edited collections.