Norm-based behaviour modification in BDI agents

Felipe Meneguzzi, Michael Luck

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPublished conference contribution

72 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

While there has been much work on developing frameworks and models of norms and normative systems, consideration of the impact of norms on the practical reasoning of agents has attracted less attention. The problem is that traditional agent architectures and their associated languages provide no mechanism to adapt an agent at runtime to norms constraining their behaviour. This is important because if BDI-type agents are to operate in open environments, they need to adapt to changes in the norms that regulate such environments. In response, in this paper we provide a technique to extend BDI agent languages, by enabling them to enact behaviour modification at runtime in response to newly accepted norms. Our solution consists of creating new plans to comply with obligations and suppressing the execution of existing plans that violate prohibitions. We demonstrate the viability of our approach through an
implementation of our solution in the AgentSpeak(L) language.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
Pages177-184
Number of pages8
Publication statusPublished - May 2009

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