Abstract
Today, the concept of an environment for multi-agent systems is in its pioneering phase. Consequently, the development of supporting software technologies is still rather primitive and environment technologies reflecting a specific world-of-interest to the agent systems are yet to be developed in full. In contrast, environment technologies that focus on the agent system itself have been in the agenda of MAS research from its very start. Electronic institutions are prominent in this respect for they have been conceived as a type of restricted MAS environment and have had an engineering technology developed around them. In this paper we explore how the restrictions currently imposed by electronic institutions may be overcome when they are seen as a part of a larger environment where agents act. In particular, we focus on situating electronic institutions by connecting them to a world-of-interest and how this process can facilitate full-fledged environment engineering.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Arcos, J.L., Esteva, M., Noriega, P., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A., Sierra, C.: Environment engineering for multiagent systems. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 18(1), 191–204 (2005), http://e-institutions.iiia.csic.es/papers/webi2/eaai.pdf
Báez-Barranco, J.-A., Stratulat, T., Ferber, J.: A unified model for physical and social environments. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8. LNCS, vol. 4389, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Ejs, easy java simulations, http://www.um.es/fem/Ejs
Esteva, M.: Electronic Institutions: from specification to development. PhD Thesis Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), 2003. Number 19 in IIIA Monograph Series. IIIA (2003)
Esteva, M., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A., Rosell, B., Arcos, J.L.: Ameli: An agent-based middleware for electronic institutions. In: Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS’04), New York, USA, July 19-23 (2004)
Esteva, M., Vasconcelos, W., Sierra, C., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A.: Norm consistency in electronic institutions. In: Bazzan, A.L.C., Labidi, S. (eds.) SBIA 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3171, pp. 494–505. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Khalil-Ibrahim, I., Kotsis, G., Kronsteiner, R.: Substitution rules for the verification of norm-compliance in electronic institutions. In: Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE’04), pp. 21–26. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2004)
Noriega, P.: Agent-Mediated Auctions: The Fishmarket Metaphor. PhD Thesis Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), 1997. Number 8 in IIIA Monograph Series. IIIA (1999)
Noriega, P.: Fencing the open fields, empirical concerns on electronic institutions (invited paper). In: Boissier, O., Padget, J., Dignum, V., Lindemann, G., Matson, E., Ossowski, S., Sichman, J.S., Vázquez-Salceda, J. (eds.) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Multi-Agent Systems. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3913, pp. 81–98. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Noriega, P., Sierra, C.: Electronic institutions: Future trends and challenges. In: Klusch, M., Ossowski, S., Shehory, O. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents VI. LNCS, vol. 2446, pp. 14–17. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
North, D.C.: Institutions, Institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge Universisy press, New York (1990)
Omicini, A., Ricci, A., Viroli, M., Castelfranchi, C., Tummolini, L.: Coordination artifacts: Environment-based coordination for intelligent agents. In: AAMAS, pp. 286–293. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2004)
Platon, E., Sabouret, N., Honiden, S.: Tag interactions in multi-agent systems: Environment support. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, vol. 4389, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Powersim. http://www.powersim.com
Repast. http://repast.sourceforge.net
Ricci, A., Omicini, A., Viroli, M., Gardelli, L., Oliva, E.: Cognitive stigmergy: A framework based on agents and artifacts. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Ricci, A., Viroli, M., Omicini, A.: Cartago: An infrastructure for engineering computational environments in MAS. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, vol. 4389, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Robles, A., Noriega, P., Luck, M., Cantú, F.: Using mas technologies for intelligent organizations: a report of bottom-up results. In: Gelbukh, A., Reyes-Garcia, C.A. (eds.) MICAI 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4293, pp. 1116–1127. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Robles, A., Noriega, P., Robles, M.J., Hernández, H., Soto, V., González, E.: A hotel information system implementation using mas technology. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS06, Hakodate, Japan, May 8-12, pp. 1542–1548. ACM Press, New York (2006)
Rodriguez-Aguilar, J.A.: On the Design and Construction of Agent-mediated Electronic Institutions, PhD Thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2001), 2001. Number 14 in IIIA Monograph Series. IIIA (2003)
Saunier, J., Balbo, F., Badeig, F.: Environment as active support of interaction. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, vol. 4389, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Sierra, C., Sabater, J., Agustí, J., Garcia, P.: Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Sytems, chapter The Sadde Methodology, pp. 195–214. Kluwer Academic Press (2004)
Simile. http://simulistics.com
Swarm. http://www.swarm.org
Valckenaers, P., Sauters, J., Sierra, C., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A.: Applications and environments for multi-agent systems. Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems 14(1), 61–85 (2007)
Vasconcelos, W.: Norm Verification and Analysis of Electronic Institutions. In: Leite, J., Omicini, A., Torroni, P., Yolum, P. (eds.) Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies II: Second International Workshop, DALT. LNCS, vol. 3476, pp. 166–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Viganò, F.: A framework for model checking institutions. In: Proceedings of the ECAI Workshop on Model checking and Artificial Intelligence (MOCHART IV) (To appear, 2006), Available from, http://www.istituti.usilu.net/viganof
Weyns, D., Holvoet, T.: A reference architecture for situated multiagent systems. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, vol. 4389, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F.: Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. Third International Workshop, E4MAS 2006, Hakodate, Japan, May 8, 2006. LNCS, vol. 4389. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Arcos, J.L., Noriega, P., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A., Sierra, C. (2007). E4MAS Through Electronic Institutions. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds) Environments for Multi-Agent Systems III. E4MAS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4389. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71103-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71103-2_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-71102-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-71103-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)