Graphically Explaining Norms

While much work has focused on the creation of norm aware agents, much less has been concerned with aiding a system's designers inunderstanding the effects of norms on a system. However, sincenorms are generally pre-determined by designers, providing suchsupport can be critical in enabling norm refinement for more effective or efficient system regulation. In this paper, we address just thisproblem by providing explanations as to why some norm is applicable, violated, or in some other state. We make use of conceptualgraph based semantics to provide an easily interpretable graphicalrepresentation of the norms within a system. Such a representationallows for visual explanation of the state of norms, showing forexample why they may have been activated or violated. These explanations then enables easy understanding of the system operationwithout needing to follow the system's underlying logic.

Authors

• Madalina Croitoru
• Nir Oren University of Aberdeen
• Simon Miles
• Michael Luck King's College London

Keywords

• Norms
• Conceptual Graphs