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International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems

PRIMA 2013: PRIMA 2013: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems pp 5–20Cite as

Norm Representation and Reasoning: A Formalization in Event Calculus

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8291))

Abstract

Norms play an important role in coordinating, regulating and predicting agents’ behavior in open multi-agent societies. Much work has been done on modeling and developing normative multi-agent systems. Norms in open multi-agent societies are not fixed, they might emerge, change or vanish; therefore agents need a mechanism to adapt their behavior accordingly. Using Event Calculus we propose a formal representation of prohibition and obligation norms. This includes the norm’s context, rewards and sanctions. Using this formalization we propose a technique for BDI agents to reason at run time about their behavior taking into consideration current norms and past actions performed by the agent. In this work, we assume that the best behavior of an agent is the behavior with maximum utility. Our technique has been applied to a simple mining simulation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St.John’s, NL, Canada

    Wagdi Alrawagfeh

Authors
  1. Wagdi Alrawagfeh
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica,, Università degli Studi di Torino, via Pessinetto 12,, 10149, Torino, Italy

    Guido Boella

  2. Division of Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

    Edith Elkind

  3. Department of Information Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu  & Martin K. Purvis  & 

  4. Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frank Dignum

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Alrawagfeh, W. (2013). Norm Representation and Reasoning: A Formalization in Event Calculus. In: Boella, G., Elkind, E., Savarimuthu, B.T.R., Dignum, F., Purvis, M.K. (eds) PRIMA 2013: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8291. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44927-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44927-7_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-44926-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-44927-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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