Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2026 Conference Paper

Engineering Norm-aware BDI Agents

• Michael Winikoff
• Frank Dignum
• Sebastian Rodriguez
• John Thangarajah

Norms are an important abstraction for multi-agent systems (MAS) because they specify flexible constraints. As constraints they help bring order to agent behaviour. However, being flexible, they can be violated, and thus do not over-constrain autonomous entities. In order to build MAS with cognitive agents that use norms we need to be able to engineer these agents to be norm-aware, i. e. being able to take norms into account in their reasoning. This paper defines an approach to engineering norm-aware BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) agents that can deal with cases including adding steps in order to comply with norms and that can be used with off-the-shelf BDI agent languages.

JAAMAS Journal 2026 Journal Article

Organizing Multiagent Systems

• Javier Vázquez-Salceda
• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

Abstract Despite all the research done in the last years on the development of methodologies for designing MAS, there is no methodology suitable for the specification and design of MAS in complex domains where both the agent view and the organizational view can be modeled. Current multiagent approaches either take a centralist, static approach to organizational design or take an emergent view in which agent interactions are not pre-determined, thus making it impossible to make any predictions on the behavior of the whole systems. Most of them also lack a model of the norms in the environment that should rule the (emergent) behavior of the agent society as a whole and/or the actions of individuals. In this paper, we propose a framework for modeling agent organizations, Organizational Model for Normative Institutions (OMNI), that allows the balance of global organizational requirements with the autonomy of individual agents. It specifies global goals of the system independently from those of the specific agents that populate the system. Both the norms that regulate interaction between agents, as well as the contextual meaning of those interactions are important aspects when specifying the organizational structure.

AIJ Journal 2025 Journal Article

Human-AI coevolution

• Dino Pedreschi
• Luca Pappalardo
• Emanuele Ferragina
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates
• Albert-László Barabási
• Frank Dignum
• Virginia Dignum
• Tina Eliassi-Rad

Human-AI coevolution, defined as a process in which humans and AI algorithms continuously influence each other, increasingly characterises our society, but is understudied in artificial intelligence and complexity science literature. Recommender systems and assistants play a prominent role in human-AI coevolution, as they permeate many facets of daily life and influence human choices through online platforms. The interaction between users and AI results in a potentially endless feedback loop, wherein users' choices generate data to train AI models, which, in turn, shape subsequent user preferences. This human-AI feedback loop has peculiar characteristics compared to traditional human-machine interaction and gives rise to complex and often “unintended” systemic outcomes. This paper introduces human-AI coevolution as the cornerstone for a new field of study at the intersection between AI and complexity science focused on the theoretical, empirical, and mathematical investigation of the human-AI feedback loop. In doing so, we: (i) outline the pros and cons of existing methodologies and highlight shortcomings and potential ways for capturing feedback loop mechanisms; (ii) propose a reflection at the intersection between complexity science, AI and society; (iii) provide real-world examples for different human-AI ecosystems; and (iv) illustrate challenges to the creation of such a field of study, conceptualising them at increasing levels of abstraction, i.e., scientific, legal and socio-political.

IJCAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Human-AI Coevolution (Abstract Reprint)

• Dino Pedreschi
• Luca Pappalardo
• Emanuele Ferragina
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates
• Albert-László Barabási
• Frank Dignum
• Virginia Dignum
• Tina Eliassi-Rad

Human-AI coevolution, defined as a process in which humans and AI algorithms continuously influence each other, increasingly characterises our society, but is understudied in artificial intelligence and complexity science literature. Recommender systems and assistants play a prominent role in human-AI coevolution, as they permeate many facets of daily life and influence human choices through online platforms. The interaction between users and AI results in a potentially endless feedback loop, wherein users' choices generate data to train AI models, which, in turn, shape subsequent user preferences. This human-AI feedback loop has peculiar characteristics compared to traditional human-machine interaction and gives rise to complex and often “unintended” systemic outcomes. This paper introduces human-AI coevolution as the cornerstone for a new field of study at the intersection between AI and complexity science focused on the theoretical, empirical, and mathematical investigation of the human-AI feedback loop. In doing so, we: (i) outline the pros and cons of existing methodologies and highlight shortcomings and potential ways for capturing feedback loop mechanisms; (ii) propose a reflection at the intersection between complexity science, AI and society; (iii) provide real-world examples for different human-AI ecosystems; and (iv) illustrate challenges to the creation of such a field of study, conceptualising them at increasing levels of abstraction, i. e. , scientific, legal and socio-political.

AAMAS Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Mitigating Value Conflicts with Computational Theory of Mind

• Emre Erdogan
• Hüseyin Aydin
• Frank Dignum
• Rineke Verbrugge
• Pinar Yolum

Multiagent systems bring together agents that represent different users with possibly different concerns. When interacting to make decisions, conflicts occur. A well-known case is with privacy. Agents often need to manage the privacy of content that belong to multiple users, such as sharing group pictures on social media. When agents have different expectations on how the content should be shared, multi-party privacy conflicts can arise. How should we design agents to deal with such conflicts? We have studied an empirical user study to understand the effect of group dynamics in various multi-party privacy settings. Our findings show that as users’ beliefs and knowledge about others evolve, privacy expectations shift as well. Inspired by this, we propose computational agents that mimic a human-inspired Theory of Mind (ToM) model to help their users preserve their privacy in multi-party privacy conflicts. The agents can express empathy when others are in need but can also fight for their own privacy. We evaluate our approach in multiagent simulations with varying decision-making strategies. Our results demonstrate that ToM-enabled agents improve privacy preservation for all parties, and even more when their understanding of others is dynamically updated through learning.

JAIR Journal 2025 Journal Article

TOMA: Computational Theory of Mind with Abstractions for Hybrid Intelligence

• Emre Erdogan
• Frank Dignum
• Rineke Verbrugge
• Pinar Yolum

Theory of mind refers to the human ability to reason about the mental content of other people, such as their beliefs, desires, and goals. People use their theory of mind to understand, reason about, and explain the behaviour of others. Having a theory of mind is especially useful when people collaborate, since individuals can then reason on what the other individual knows as well as what reasoning they might do. Similarly, hybrid intelligence systems, where AI agents collaborate with humans, necessitate that the agents reason about the humans using computational theory of mind. However, to try to keep track of all individual mental attitudes of all other individuals becomes (computationally) very difficult. Accordingly, this paper provides a mechanism for computational theory of mind based on abstractions of single beliefs into higher-level concepts. These abstractions can be triggered by social norms and roles. Their use in decision making serves as a heuristic to choose among interactions, thus facilitating collaboration. We provide a formalization based on epistemic logic to explain how various inferences enable such a computational theory of mind. Using examples from the medical domain, we demonstrate how having such a theory of mind enables an agent to interact with humans effectively and can increase the quality of the decisions humans make.

IJCAI Conference 2022 Conference Paper

Why Bad Coffee? Explaining BDI Agent Behaviour with Valuings (Extended Abstract)

• Michael Winikoff
• Galina Sidorenko
• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

An important issue in deploying an autonomous system is how to enable human users and stakeholders to develop an appropriate level of trust in the system. It has been argued that a crucial mechanism to enable appropriate trust is the ability of a system to explain its behaviour. Obviously, such explanations need to be comprehensible to humans. Due to the perceived similarity in functioning between humans and autonomous systems, we argue that it makes sense to build on the results of extensive research in social sciences that explores how humans explain their behaviour. Using similar concepts for explanation is argued to help with comprehensibility, since the concepts are familiar. Following work in the social sciences, we propose the use of a folk-psychological model that utilises beliefs, desires, and ``valuings''. We propose a formal framework for constructing explanations of the behaviour of an autonomous system, present an (implemented) algorithm for giving explanations, and present evaluation results.

AIJ Journal 2021 Journal Article

Why bad coffee? Explaining BDI agent behaviour with valuings

• Michael Winikoff
• Galina Sidorenko
• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

An important issue in deploying an autonomous system is how to enable human users and stakeholders to develop an appropriate level of trust in the system. It has been argued that a crucial mechanism to enable appropriate trust is the ability of a system to explain its behaviour. Obviously, such explanations need to be comprehensible to humans. Due to the perceived similarity in functioning between humans and autonomous systems, we argue that it makes sense to build on the results of extensive research in social sciences that explores how humans explain their behaviour. Using similar concepts for explanation is argued to help with comprehensibility, since the concepts are familiar. Following work in the social sciences, we propose the use of a folk-psychological model that utilises beliefs, desires, and “valuings”. We propose a formal framework for constructing explanations of the behaviour of an autonomous system, present an (implemented) algorithm for giving explanations, and present evaluation results.

IJCAI Conference 2019 Conference Paper

Governance by Glass-Box: Implementing Transparent Moral Bounds for AI Behaviour

• Andrea Aler Tubella
• Andreas Theodorou
• Frank Dignum
• Virginia Dignum

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications are being used to predict and assess behaviour in multiple domains which directly affect human well-being. However, if AI is to improve people’s lives, then people must be able to trust it, by being able to understand what the system is doing and why. Although transparency is often seen as the requirement in this case, realistically it might not always be possible, whereas the need to ensure that the system operates within set moral bounds remains. In this paper, we present an approach to evaluate the moral bounds of an AI system based on the monitoring of its inputs and outputs. We place a ‘Glass-Box’ around the system by mapping moral values into explicit verifiable norms that constrain inputs and outputs, in such a way that if these remain within the box we can guarantee that the system adheres to the value. The focus on inputs and outputs allows for the verification and comparison of vastly different intelligent systems; from deep neural networks to agent-based systems. The explicit transformation of abstract moral values into concrete norms brings great benefits in terms of explainability; stakeholders know exactly how the system is interpreting and employing relevant abstract moral human values and calibrate their trust accordingly. Moreover, by operating at a higher level we can check the compliance of the system with different interpretations of the same value.

AAMAS Conference 2019 Conference Paper

Incorporating Social Practices in BDI Agent Systems

• Stephen Cranefield
• Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2019 Conference Paper

On Enactability of Agent Interaction Protocols: Towards a Unified Approach

• Angelo Ferrando
• Michael Winikoff
• Stephen Cranefield
• Frank Dignum
• Viviana Mascardi

Interactions between agents are usually designed from a global viewpoint. However, the implementation of a multi-agent interaction is distributed. This difference can introduce problems. For instance, it is possible to specify protocols from a global viewpoint that cannot be implemented as a collection of individual agents. This leads naturally to the question of whether a given (global) protocol is enactable. We consider this question in a powerful setting (trace expressions), considering a range of message ordering interpretations (specifying what it means to say that an interaction step occurs before another), and a range of possible constraints on the semantics of message delivery, corresponding to different properties of the underlying communication middleware.

IJCAI Conference 2017 Conference Paper

No Pizza for You: Value-based Plan Selection in BDI Agents

• Stephen Cranefield
• Michael Winikoff
• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

Autonomous agents are increasingly required to be able to make moral decisions. In these situations, the agent should be able to reason about the ethical bases of the decision and explain its decision in terms of the moral values involved. This is of special importance when the agent is interacting with a user and should understand the value priorities of the user in order to provide adequate support. This paper presents a model of agent behavior that takes into account user preferences and moral values.

ECAI Conference 2016 Conference Paper

Dialogues as Social Practices for Serious Games

• Agnese Augello
• Manuel Gentile
• Lucas Weideveld
• Frank Dignum

The paper describes an architecture for a social conversational agent. The aim is to use the agent in a serious game to improve the social and communicative skills of the players, showing the social effects of conversational choices on the emotions and behavioural changes of the interlocutors.

JAAMAS Journal 2015 Journal Article

Preference-based reasoning in BDI agent systems

• Simeon Visser
• John Thangarajah
• Frank Dignum

Abstract An important feature of BDI agent systems is number of different ways in which an agent can achieve its goals. The choice of means to achieve the goal in made by the system at run time, depending on contextual information that is not available in advance. In this article, we explore ways that the user of an agent system can specify preferences which can be incorporated into the BDI execution process and used to guide the choices made. For example, a user of a travel system can specify a preferred airline, or a particular kind of accommodation, and the system will use this information to satisfy the goal and preferences, if possible. Preferences are specified in terms of properties of goals and resource usage, and are used to make two types of decisions: (a) select a plan when there is a choice and (b) determine the order in which subgoals of a plan should be pursued when their order is not fixed by design. We have implemented our preference framework in Jadex, and provide detailed case studies within the context of a holiday travel agent application.

AAMAS Conference 2013 Conference Paper

Agent-Based Evolving Societies

• Loïs Vanhée
• Jacques Ferber
• Frank Dignum

This paper describes a method to build artificial societies that can dynamically expand themselves from bottom-up, in order to cope with environmental changes. This method is then applied to model the evolutions through the first stages of human societies, inspired by social science theories.

AAAI Conference 2013 Conference Paper

An Agent Model for the Appraisal of Normative Events Based in In-Group and Out-Group Relations

• Nuno Ferreira
• Samuel Mascarenhas
• Ana Paiva
• Gennaro Di Tosto
• Frank Dignum
• John Mc Breen
• Nick Degens
• Gert Hofstede

Emotional synthetic characters are able to evaluate (appraise) events as positive or negative with their emotional states being triggered by several factors. Currently, the vast majority of models for appraisal in synthetic characters consider factors related to the goals and preferences of the characters. We argue that appraisals that only take into consideration these “personal” factors are incomplete as other more social factors, such as the normative and the social context, including in-group and out-group relations, should be considered as well. Without them, moral emotions such as shame cannot be appraised, limiting the believability of the characters in certain situations. We present a model for the appraisal of characters’ actions that evaluates whether actions by in-group and out-group members which conform, or not, to social norms generate different emotions depending on the social relations between the characters. The model was then implemented in an architecture for virtual agents and evaluated with humans. Results suggest that the emotions generated by our model are perceived by the participants, taking into account the social context and that participants experienced very similar emotions, both in type and intensity, to the emotions appraised and generated by the characters.

AAMAS Conference 2013 Conference Paper

Blame on Them, Shame on Us: Combining Affective and Normative Behaviour in Intelligent Virtual Agents

• Nuno Ferreira
• Samuel Mascarenhas
• Ana Paiva
• John Mc Breen
• Nick Degens
• Gert Jan Hofstede
• Gennaro Di Tosto
• Frank Dignum

Virtual environments often try to simulate situations where agents should display socially acceptable behaviour, as described by social norms. Actions that fulfil or violate norms can be potential sources for emotions, not just for the agent responsible, but for all agents that witness the event. We claim that the type and intensity of those emotions depends, not only on the salience (importance) of the norm, but also on the social relations between agents. We present a model to generate emotions triggered by a norm-related event, based on a subjective evaluation (appraisal) of this event made by every agent that witnessed it. This appraisal takes into account the salience of the norms and the social relations in order to create more believable agents.

TIST Journal 2013 Journal Article

Introduction to the special section on agent communication

• Amit K. Chopra
• Alexander Artikis
• Jamal Bentahar
• Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2013 Conference Paper

Norm Compliance Checking

• Jie Jiang
• Virginia Dignum
• Huib Aldewereld
• Frank Dignum
• Yao-Hua Tan

In multi-agent systems, norms are used to regulate agents’ behavior so that the objectives of the systems can be realized in a predictable way. Therefore, it is important to check whether agents can comply with the norms imposed on them. However, when norms are interrelated, verification of norm compliance cannot be achieved by checking compliance of each norm separately as done traditionally. To this effect, this extended abstract introduces an approach which first models a set of interrelated norms as Norm Nets, and then map them to Colored Petri Nets (CPNs), by which compliance checking of both individual agents’ behavior and the collective behavior of the system can be performed automatically. With CPNs, it is also possible to identify under which conditions the norms can be complied with.

TIST Journal 2013 Journal Article

Research directions in agent communication

• Amit K. Chopra
• Alexander Artikis
• Jamal Bentahar
• Marco Colombetti
• Frank Dignum
• Nicoletta Fornara
• Andrew J. I. Jones
• Munindar P. Singh

Increasingly, software engineering involves open systems consisting of autonomous and heterogeneous participants or agents who carry out loosely coupled interactions. Accordingly, understanding and specifying communications among agents is a key concern. A focus on ways to formalize meaning distinguishes agent communication from traditional distributed computing: meaning provides a basis for flexible interactions and compliance checking. Over the years, a number of approaches have emerged with some essential and some irrelevant distinctions drawn among them. As agent abstractions gain increasing traction in the software engineering of open systems, it is important to resolve the irrelevant and highlight the essential distinctions, so that future research can be focused in the most productive directions. This article is an outcome of extensive discussions among agent communication researchers, aimed at taking stock of the field and at developing, criticizing, and refining their positions on specific approaches and future challenges. This article serves some important purposes, including identifying (1) points of broad consensus; (2) points where substantive differences remain; and (3) interesting directions of future work.

AAMAS Conference 2013 Conference Paper

Social Agents for Serious Games

• Joost van Oijen
• Frank Dignum

In this paper we propose the use of a shared social context to facilitate agent perception of social dynamics within a virtual environment. We argue that through a shared context it can be more feasible to equip agents with social behaviors and reasoning rules for social intelligence, better suited for real-time constrained serious games with multiple agents.

AAMAS Conference 2012 Conference Paper

Agent Communication for Believable Human-Like Interactions between Virtual Characters

• Joost van Oijen
• Frank Dignum

In this paper we present a model for realizing believable human-like interaction between virtual agents situated cognitively in a MAS on one side while embodied in a virtual environment within a game engine on the other side. A middleware approach is taken to facilitate such agents in communication, hereby making a tradeoff between efficiency and believability while taking into account the real-time requirements of games and simulations.

AILAW Journal 2012 Journal Article

No smoking here: values, norms and culture in multi-agent systems

• Francien Dechesne
• Gennaro Di Tosto
• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

Abstract We use the example of the introduction of the anti-smoking legislation to model the relationship between the cultural make-up, in terms of values, of societies and the acceptance of and compliance with norms. We present two agent-based simulations and discuss the challenge of modeling sanctions and their relation to values and culture.

AAMAS Conference 2011 Conference Paper

A Perception Framework for Intelligent Characters in Serious Games

• Joost van Oijen
• Frank Dignum

In this paper we present a framework for perceptual attention for BDI-agents embodied in a virtual environment. To abstract from different data representations present in virtual environments, we introduce an ontological information model to define environment semantics. Further, the framework proposes an approach for goal-directed perception based on the specification of different interests, which define selected information from the environment an agent is interested in. These interests filter and extract specific information from a continuous incoming flow of sensory information. In this way we can find a balance between stimulus-driven control and goal based control over perception. Thus preventing an agent to become flooded with irrelevant information on the one hand or blinded for unexpected events that need to be reacted to on the other hand.

JAAMAS Journal 2011 Journal Article

Agents for games and simulations

• Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2011 Conference Paper

Multi-Criteria Argument Selection In Persuasion Dialogues

• Tom L. van der Weide
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Ch. Meyer
• H. Prakken
• Gerard A. W. Vreeswijk

The main goal of a persuasion dialogue is to persuade, but agents may have a number of additional goals concerning the dialogue duration, how much and what information is shared or how aggressive the agent is. Several criteria have been proposed in the literature covering different aspects of what may matter to an agent, but it is not clear how to combine these criteria that are often incommensurable and partial. This paper is inspired by multi-attribute decision theory and considers argument selection as decision-making where multiple criteria matter. A meta-level argumentation system is proposed to argue about what argument an agent should select in a given persuasion dialogue. The criteria and sub-criteria that matter to an agent are structured hierarchically into a value tree and meta-level argument schemes are formalized that use a value tree to justify what argument the agent should select. In this way, incommensurable and partial criteria can be combined.

AAMAS Conference 2011 Conference Paper

Scalable Adaptive Serious Games using Agent Organizations

• Joost Westra
• Frank Dignum
• Virginia Dignum

Serious games and other training applications have the requirement that they should be suitable for trainees with different skill levels. Current approaches either use human experts or a completely centralized approach for this adaptation. These centralized approaches become very impractical and will not scale if the complexity of the game increases. Agents can be used in serious game implementations as a means to reduce complexity and increase believability but without some centralized coordination it becomes practically impossible to follow the intended storyline of the game and select suitable difficulties for the trainee. In this paper we show that using agent organizations to coordinate the agents is scalable and allows adaptation in very complex scenarios while making sure the storyline is preserved the right difficulty level for the trainee is preserved.

AAMAS Conference 2010 Conference Paper

ALIVE: An Agent-Based Framework for Dynamic and Robust Service-Oriented Applications

• Javier Vazquez
• Wamberto W. Vasconcelos
• Julian Padget
• Frank Dignum
• Siobhan Clarke
• Manel Palau Roig

Service-oriented systems are becoming more and more nodes in adigital, dynamic ecosystem requiring the identification and establishment of flexible, spontaneous collaboration activities betweenservices. This requires new engineering approaches that can integrate new functionalities and behaviours into existing running systems of active, distributed and interdependent processes. Here, wepresent the approach of the FP7 ALIVE1 project to the use of formalmodels of coordination and organisation mechanisms to deliver aflexible, high-level means to describe the structure of interactionsbetween services in the environment. We propose to build on thecurrent activities in service-oriented engineering by defining threelevels: (i) An organisational level models the organisational structure of executing and interlinked services and the context aroundthem. (ii) A coordination level provides flexible ways to model interaction between the services. (iii) These two levels connect withexisting (semantic) Web services, which contain semantic descriptions to make components aware of their social context and of therules of engagement with other services.

AAMAS Conference 2010 Conference Paper

Making Norms Concrete

• Huib Aldewereld
• Sergio
• Aacute; lvarez-Napagao
• Frank Dignum
• Javier V
• aacute; zquez-Salceda

In systems based on organisational specifications a reoccurring problem remains to be solved in the disparity between the level of abstractness of the organisational concepts and the concepts used in the implementation. Organisational specifications (deliberately) abstract from generalpractice, which creates a need to relate the abstract conceptsused in the specification to concrete ones used in practice. A solution for this problem is the use of counts-as statements, which, by defining the social reality, provide the concrete concepts their institutional and organisational meaning. Continuing work on the implementation of counts-asto relate abstract and concrete concepts in agent-based systems, this paper investigates the implementation of counts-as statements in Drools to relate abstract organisationalspecifications and its norms to concrete situations.

ECAI Conference 2010 Conference Paper

Modeling the problem of many hands in organisations

• Tiago de Lima
• Lambèr M. M. Royakkers
• Frank Dignum

In this paper we provide a formalism to reason about the problem of many hands in organisations. This is a problem that arises whenever the organisation is responsible for some undesirable outcome but none of its members can be held responsible for the outcome. The formalism proposed here is a logic that extends the Coalition Epistemic Dynamic Logic by adding a notion of group knowledge and also organisational structures to its semantics. An organisational structure is a set of agents and some relations between them. It defines the power and coordination links between agents, which defines how agents delegate tasks and communicate. We give formal definitions for individual and collective responsibility, as well as for the problem of the many hands.

AAMAS Conference 2008 Conference Paper

Achieving Efficient and Equitable Collaboration among Selfish Agents using Spender-Signed Currency

• Geert Jonker
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Meyer

We study collaboration among selfish agents in the tactical airport planning domain. This can be seen as a social exchange scenario, in which the efforts of performing tasks are the resources that are being exchanged. We investigate conditions under which a market mechanism with the use of standard currency leads to efficient and equitable exchange among benevolent agents. We show that, if some agents are selfish, the mechanism can become inequitable and therefore unacceptable. A straight forward penalty rule is not enough to restore equity, as it is attractive to deviate from such a rule. As a solution, we present an novel currency system, under which malicious agents can be punished, resulting in efficient and equitable exchange.

ECAI Conference 2008 Conference Paper

Magic Agents: Using Information Relevance to Control Autonomy

• Bob van der Vecht
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Ch. Meyer

Autonomous agents are believed to have control over their internal state and over their behaviour. For that reason, an agent should control how and by whom it is being influenced. We introduce a reasoning component for BDI-agents that deals with the control over external influences, and we propose heuristics using local knowledge to process incoming stimuli. One of those heuristics is based on information relevance with respect to the agent's current plans and goals. We have developed a way to determine the relevance of information in BDI-agents using magic sets from database research as basis. The method presented shows a new application of magic sets by applying the theory in agent systems.

AAMAS Conference 2008 Conference Paper

Multi-Agent Plan Diagnosis and Negotiated Repair

• Huib Aldewereld
• Pieter Buzing
• Geert Jonker
• Femke de Jonge
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Ch. Meyer
• Nico Roos
• Cees Witteveen

In the complex, dynamic domain of Air Traffic Control (ATC) many unexpected events can happen during the execution of a plan. Sometimes these disruptions make the plan infeasible and require a change of the original plan. Unexpected events may disrupt the execution of a plan leading to conflicts concerning the use of shared resources. By monitoring the possibly disrupted execution of a plan, air traffic controllers identify and repair conflicts before they occur, making the plan ‘healthy’ again. Model-based diagnosis helps to identify the causes of observed disruptions in the execution of a plan. This information enables the creation of better plan repairs. These repairs should efficient, but moreover they should be fair, i. e. , one airline should not be the victim of conflicts caused by another. Due to the complexity of planning tasks, it is beneficial to provide a distributed solution such that the workload is spread instead of centralised. Moreover, since the choice between various possible solutions to a conflict in the plan execution directly influence different parties (with diverting interests), the decision about which solution to choose should not be made by a single (central) decision maker, but agreed upon by the different parties involved. The Multi-Agent Diagnosis and negotiated repair (MAD) demonstrator combines our previous research done on model-based diagnosis, planning and scheduling techniques, and methods for multi-agent negotiation to solve this problem in a distributed manner. The resulting tool is a system to support the control and adaptation of distributed plan execution in the domain of ATC.

AAMAS Conference 2007 Conference Paper

A Formal Road from Institutional Norms to Organizational Structures

• Davide Grossi
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Ch. Meyer

Up to now, the way institutions and organizations have been used in the development of open systems has not often gone further than a useful heuristics. In order to develop systems actually implementing institutions and organizations, formal methods should take the place of heuristic ones. The paper presents a formal semantics for the notion of institution and its components (abstract and concrete norms, empowerment of agents, roles) and defines a formal relation between institutions and organizational structures. As a result, it is shown how institutional norms can be refined to constructs–organizational structures–which are closer to an implemented system. It is also shown how such a refinement process can be fully formalized and it is therefore amenable to rigorous verification.

AAMAS Conference 2007 Conference Paper

Achieving Cooperation among Selfish Agents in the Air Traffic Management Domain using Signed Money

• Geert Jonker
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Meyer

We present a monetary system by which selfish agents can cooperate reciprocally. We show that a straight-forward market mechanism can lead to unfair situations when agents misuse key positions. We show that it is not easy to retaliate wrongdoers, as there is a dominant strategy that deviates from the retaliating strategy. We present a monetary system in which every user can issue money and every user is required to sign each credit it issues or circulates. By using a trust-based credit-valuation function, wrongdoers are retaliated and it is no longer dominant to deviate from the retaliating strategy.

AAMAS Conference 2007 Conference Paper

Designing Protocols for Agent Institutions

• Huib Aldewereld
• Frank Dignum
• JohnJules Ch. Meyer

AILAW Journal 2007 Journal Article

From human regulations to regulated software agents’ behavior

• Javier Vázquez-Salceda
• Huib Aldewereld
• Davide Grossi
• Frank Dignum

Abstract In order to design and implement electronic institutions that incorporate norms governing the behavior of the participants of those institutions, some crucial steps should be taken. The first problem is that human norms are (on purpose) specified on an abstract level. This ensures applicability of the norms over long periods of time in many different circumstances. However, for an electronic institution to function according to those norms, they should be concrete enough to be able to check them run time. A second problem is that norms describe which behavior is desirable and permitted, but not how this is achieved in an institution. In the “real world" regulations often indicate procedures for implementing and enforcing the law. Likewise we should devise means to annotate the norms with practical aspects such as enforcement mechanisms, sanctions, etc. in order to get requirements for an institution that will enforce norms (by either constraining behavior within the norms or reacting to violation of the norms). The choice of which kind of mechanism is chosen is not a normative one, but usually based on criteria of efficiency and/or feasibility of the mechanism. In this paper we present our view on how to approach these problems and other related issues to be solved in order to develop e-institutions capable to operate in complex, highly regulated scenarios.

AILAW Journal 2007 Journal Article

Organizational structure and responsibility

• Davide Grossi
• Lambèr Royakkers
• Frank Dignum

Abstract Aim of the present paper is to provide a formal characterization of various different notions of responsibility within groups of agents (Who did that? Who gets the blame? Who is accountable for that? etc.). To pursue this aim, the papers proposes an organic analysis of organized collective agency by tackling the issues of organizational structure, role enactment, organizational activities, task-division and task-allocation. The result consists in a semantic framework based on dynamic logic in which all these concepts can be represented and in which various notions of responsibility find a formalization. The background motivation of the work consists in those responsibility-related issues which are of particular interest for the theory and development of multi-agent systems.

JAAMAS Journal 2006 Journal Article

Agent communication and social concepts

• Frank Dignum
• Rogier M. van Eijk

AAMAS Conference 2006 Conference Paper

ANEMONE: An effective minimal ontology negotiation environment

• Jurriaan van Diggelen
• Robbert Jan Beun
• Frank Dignum
• Rogier van Eijk
• John-Jules Meyer

EUMAS Conference 2006 Conference Paper

Coordinating Tasks in Agent Organizations

• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2006 Conference Paper

Operationalisation of Norms for Usage in Electronic Institutions

• Huib Aldewereld
• Andres Garcia-Camino
• Frank Dignum
• Pablo Noriega
• Juan Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar
• Carles Sierra

AAMAS Conference 2006 Conference Paper

Structural Evaluation of Agent Organizations

• Davide Grossi
• Frank Dignum
• Virginia Dignum
• Mehdi Dastani
• Lamber Royakkers

EUMAS Conference 2005 Conference Paper

A Two-tiered Model of Negotiation Based on Web Service Agreements

• David G. A. Mobach
• Benno J. Overeinder
• Frances M. T. Brazier
• Frank Dignum

AAMAS Conference 2005 Conference Paper

Foundations of Organizational Structures in Multi-Agent Systems

• Davide Grossi
• Frank Dignum
• Lamber Royakkers
• Mehdi Dastani

AAMAS Conference 2005 Conference Paper

Norm Compliance of Protocols in Electronic Institutions

• Huib Aldewereld
• Javier Vazquez-Salceda
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Meyer

KER Journal 2004 Journal Article

An agent-mediated approach to the support of knowledge sharing in organizations

• Virginia Dignum
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Meyer

The realization that knowledge management (KM) is primarily a management science and not a computer science implies a different role for technology in KM. This role is concerned with supporting and extending human interaction and learning, and has therefore the need for intelligence-enhanced, integrated and personalized solutions including agent-based approaches. A people-centered view of KM requires support systems that enable the flexible integration of organizational and individual requirements and objectives. This paper introduces the OperA model for organizations that supports individual initiative and collaboration while prescribing a formal structure for organizational processes. The paper introduces the main aspects of the model and describes a case study where OperA is applied to the development of a knowledge-sharing support system.

AAMAS Conference 2004 Conference Paper

Issues in Multiagent System Development

• Mehdi Dastani
• Joris Hulstijn
• Frank Dignum
• John-Jules Meyer

AAMAS Conference 2003 Conference Paper

Towards Interest-Based Negotiation

• Iyad Rahwan
• Liz Sonenberg
• Frank Dignum

AILAW Journal 1999 Journal Article

Autonomous agents with norms

• Frank Dignum

In this paper we present some concepts and their relations that are necessary for modeling autonomous agents in an environment that is governed by some (social) norms. We divide the norms over three levels: the private level the contract level and the convention level. We show how deontic logic can be used to model the concepts and how the theory of speech acts can be used to model the generation of (some of) the norms. Finally we give some idea about an agent architecture incorporating the social norms based on a BDI framework.