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Constructing Robust Conversation Policies in Dynamic Agent Communities

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1916))

Abstract

Conversation policies codify allowable exchanges of speech acts among agents as they execute specific types of tasks. Both the set of agents in a community, and the nature of those agents may change over time; however, these agents must conform to a common set of conversation policies that are robust to change and failure. We describe aspects of the implementation of conversation policies in InfoSleuth, including the integral use of finite-state automata for defining those policies. We identify features of those automata and the underlying performatives that are necessary for their robust and correct execution in an operational community. We describe the construction of new conversation policies from simpler underlying components using two mechanisms, extension and concatenation. In this way, we can ensure that the specification of these new policies is easily sharable, and that certain shared characteristics of multiple conversation policies are enforced consistently.

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Nodine, M.H., Unruh, A. (2000). Constructing Robust Conversation Policies in Dynamic Agent Communities. In: Dignum, F., Greaves, M. (eds) Issues in Agent Communication. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1916. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10722777_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/10722777_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41144-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-40028-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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