Skip to main content

Designing Institutional Multi-Agent Systems

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4405))

Abstract

The vision of agents working together on the Internet, in virtual organizations, is one that is increasingly common. However, one of the issues is the regulation of the participating agents and their behaviour. A substantial body of work exists that investigates agent societies and agent organizations, including work on electronic institutions, such as Islander and Ameli. However, although such work provides concrete tools for specifying and enacting institutions, there is a lack of clear documented guidance to designers who are using these tools. In this paper we describe a methodology for developing an institutional structure for multi agent systems. This methodology captures the knowledge and experience within the Islander group, and integrates it with the Prometheus methodology.

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant LP0453486, in collaboration with Agent Oriented Software. We also thank the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse for use of their tourism content in our agents. Carles Sierra is being supported by the Spanish Web-I(2) project and the ARC Discovery Grant DP0557168.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Horling, B., Lesser, V.: A survey of multi-agent organizational paradigms. The Knowledge Engineering Review 19, 281–316 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Esteva, M.: Electronic Institutions: from specification to development. IIIA PhD Monography, vol. 19 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A.: On the Design and Construction of Agent-mediated Electronic Institutions. IIIA Phd Monography. vol. 14 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Noriega, P.: Agent-Mediated Auctions: The Fishmarket Metaphor. IIIA Phd Monography, vol. 8 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dignum, V.: A Model for Organizational Interaction. PhD thesis, Dutch Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Esteva, M., de la Cruz, D., Sierra, C.: Islander: an electronic institutions editor. In: Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS 2002), Bologna, Italy, pp. 1045–1052 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Arcos, J.L., et al.: Engineering open environments with electronic institutions. Journal on Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 18, 191–204 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Padgham, L., Winikoff, M.: Developing Intelligent Agent Systems: A Practical Guide. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Padgham, L., Thangarajah, J., Winikoff, M.: Tool Support for Agent Development using the Prometheus Methodology. In: First international workshop on Integration of Software Engineering and Agent Technology (ISEAT 2005), Melbourne, Australia (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Esteva, M., et al.: On the formal specification of electronic institutions. In: Sierra, C., Dignum, F.P.M. (eds.) AgentLink 2000. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1991, pp. 126–147. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A., et al.: Fm96.5 a Java-based Electronic Auction House. In: Second International Conference on The Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology (PAAM’97), pp. 207–224 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Cuní, G., et al.: MASFIT: Multi-agent Systems for Fish Trading. In: 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2004), Valencia, Spain, pp. 710–714 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  13. van Lamsweerde, A.: Goal-oriented requirements engineering: A guided tour. In: Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE’01), Toronto, pp. 249–263 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Fox, M.S.: Organization structuring: Designing large complex software. Technical Report CMU-CS-79-155, Carnegie-Mellon University (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Shehory, O., Kraus, S.: Methods for task allocation via agent coalition formation. Artificial Intelligence 101, 165–200 (1998)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Chvatal, V.: A greedy heuristic for the set covering problem. Mathematics of Operations Research 4 (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Tambe, M.: Towards flexible teamwork. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 7, 83–124 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Henderson-Sellers, B., Giorgini, P. (eds.): Agent-Oriented Methodologies. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Bergenti, F., Gleizes, M.P., Zambonelli, F. (eds.): Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems. The Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Handbook. Kluwer, Dordrecht (2004)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Parunak, H., Odell, J.: Representing social structures in UML. In: Wooldridge, M.J., Weiß, G., Ciancarini, P. (eds.) AOSE 2001. LNCS, vol. 2222, pp. 1–16. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Vazquez, J., Dignum, F.: Modelling electronic organizations. In: Mařík, V., Müller, J.P., Pěchouček, M. (eds.) CEEMAS 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2691, pp. 584–593. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Zambonelli, F., Jennings, N., Wooldridge, M.: Developing multiagent systems: The gaia methodology. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 12, 317–370 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Bellifemine, F., Poggi, A., Rimassa, G.: Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE. In: Castelfranchi, C., Lespérance, Y. (eds.) ATAL 2000. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1986, pp. 89–103. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Cremonini, M., Omicini, A., Zambonelli, F.: Multi-agent systems on the Internet: Extending the scope of coordination towards security and topology. In: Garijo, F.J., Boman, M. (eds.) MAAMAW 1999. LNCS, vol. 1647, pp. 77–88. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Ciancarini, P., Omicini, A., Zambonelli, F.: Multiagent system engineering: The coordination viewpoint. In: Jennings, N.R. (ed.) ATAL 1999. LNCS, vol. 1757, pp. 15–17. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Hanachi, C., Sibertin-Blanc, C.: Protocol Moderators as Active Middle-Agents in Multi-Agent Systems. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems 8 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Omicini, A., et al.: Coordination artifacts: Environment-based coordination for intelligent agents. In: Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS’04), New York, USA, pp. 286–293 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Lin Padgham Franco Zambonelli

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Sierra, C., Thangarajah, J., Padgham, L., Winikoff, M. (2007). Designing Institutional Multi-Agent Systems. In: Padgham, L., Zambonelli, F. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VII. AOSE 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4405. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70945-9_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70945-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-70944-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70945-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics