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Exception diagnosis in multiagent contract executions

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Abstract

We propose a diagnosis procedure that agents can use to explain exceptions to contract executions. Contracts are expressed by social commitments associated with temporal constraints. The procedure reasons from the relations among such commitments, and returns one amongst different possible mismatches that may have caused an exception. In particular, we consider two possibilities: misalignment, when two agents have two different views of the same commitment, and misbehavior, when there is no misalignment, but a debtor agent fails to oblige. We also provide a realignment policy that can be applied in case of a misalignment. Our formalization uses a reactive form of Event Calculus. We illustrate the workings of our approach by discussing a delivery process from e-commerce as a case study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Boğaziçi University, 34342, Bebek, İstanbul, Turkey

    Özgür Kafalı

  2. DEIS, University of Bologna, V.le Risorgimento, 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    Paolo Torroni

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  1. Özgür Kafalı
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  2. Paolo Torroni
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Correspondence to Paolo Torroni.

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Kafalı, Ö., Torroni, P. Exception diagnosis in multiagent contract executions. Ann Math Artif Intell 64, 73–107 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-012-9282-1

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