NorMAS - Normative Multiagent Systems
Researchers
- Leon van der Torre (Professor)
- Guido Boella (Professor)
- Patrice Caire (PhD candidate)
- Patrizio Barbini (PhD candidate)
- Valerio Genovese (PhD candidate)
Overview
A normative multi-agent system combines models for normative systems (dealing for example with obligations, permissions and prohibitions) with models for multi-agent systems. Normative multi-agent systems provide a promising model for human and artificial agent co-ordination, because they integrate norms and individual intelligence. They are a prime example of the use of sociological theories in multi-agent systems, and therefore of the relation between agent theory - both multi-agent systems and autonomous agents - and the social sciences - sociology, philosophy, economics, legal science, etc.
Norms have been proposed in multi-agent systems and computer science to deal with coordination issues, to deal with security issues of multi-agent systems, to model legal issues in electronic institutions and electronic commerce, to model multi-agent organizations, etc. However, there is no common theory of normative multi-agent systems, due to the lack of a universal theory in the social sciences. Therefore, presently many multi-agent system researchers are developing their own ad hoc theories and applications.
During the past years we have been observing a rising interest in social theory in multi-agent systems, which is moving more and more from the individual, cognitive focused agent models to models of socially situated agents. In particular attention is given to normative multi-agent systems, because the use of norms is the key of human social intelligence. If artificial agents are to display behavior equal to human intelligent behavior or collaborate with humans, norms are essential. Norms have been mentioned in agent research for quite some time, but lately we can see that the research field has matured.
We therefore organized tutorials at the European Agent Summer School in Liverpool (EASSS04) and the IEEE Intelligent Agent Technology conference in Beijing (IAT04) and consequently the NorMAS05 symposium at the 2005 AISB conference. In 2007 we organized the Dagstuhl Seminar "Normative Multi-agent systems" 07122 with the aim of identifying common definitions, ontologies, research problems and applications. NorMAS 2008 has been organized together with the DEON 2008 conference in Luxembourg. This need for models, theories and tools in multi-agent systems has also been observed in the related area of "deontic logic of computer science". However, the gap between the DEON community and the multi-agent systems community is due to the fact that the DEON community restricts itself to one formal language, a branch of modal logic called deontic logic.
Norms are also considered in various workshops in multi-agent systems concerned with for example legal issues, organizations, institutions, and so on. We have been involved in some of these events ourselves, and we have observed the need for an occasion to discuss and compare the various proposals now under development. The traditional agent workshops are not sufficient, because they are not just concerned with the norms in multi-agent systems but also with some other issues (coordination, security, etc).
Subprojects
- Conviviality (Patrice Caire)
- Project TBA (Patrizio Barbini)
- Project TBA (Valerio Genovese)