Exploiting social reasoning to enhance adaptation in open multi-agent systems

Abstract

This paper shows how a social reasoning mechanism can be used by an agent in order to enhance his adaptation in an open multiagent system. By open multi-agent system, we mean that new agents can dynamically enter and leave the agency and that some of them can change their current knowledge during execution time. We call adaptation the fact that due to these changes, the agents may be led to make different choices regarding the way to achieve their goals, particularly to whom they will propose/accept to collaborate in order to achieve these goals. Precisely, an agent can reason about his dependence situations in order to choose which are the most appropriate partners for achieving a certain goal, when he cannot achieve it alone. We present briefly both our agent model and the theory of dependence on which our social reasoning mechanism is based, and illustrate how such an adaptation can be achieved using a very simple example of the blocks world.

On leave from PCS-EPUSP, Brazil, and supported by FAPESP, grant number 91/1943-5.

Research Fellow at CNRS, France.