CAREER: Contractual Agent Societies: Negotiated Shared Context and Social Control in Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Information systems for supporting the fluid organizations of the 21st century must be correspondingly open and agile, able to automatically configure themselves out of heterogeneous system components, accommodate the dynamic exit and entry of hitherto unknown participants and maintain system stability in the face of limited trust. The goal of this project is to develop technologies that enable the construction of such Contractual Agent Societies (CAS), open information systems where independently developed agents configure themselves automatically through a set of dynamically negotiated social contracts. Social contracts define the shared context of agent interactions, including ontologies, joint beliefs, joint goals, normative behaviors, etc. In addition, they specify classes of contract violations together with associated sanctions and enforcement mechanisms. The deliverables of this work include a language and ontology for representing social contracts, as well as the definition of agent architectures capable of negotiating social contracts and adapting their behavior accordingly. Significant attention will be given to the experimental evaluation of the proposed agent architecture by developing prototype CAS versions of at least two different electronic marketplaces and demonstrating how CAS buyer and seller agents can successfully move between marketplaces, adapting themselves according to the rules of each marketplace.