An algorithm for conflict resolution in regulated compound activities

Abstract

The use of norms is a well-known technique of co-ordination in multi-agent systems (MAS) adopted from human societies. A normative position is the "social burden" associated with individual agents, that is, their obligations, permissions and prohibitions. Compound activities may be regulated by means of normative positions. However, conflicts may appear among normative positions of activities and sub-activities. Recently several computational approaches have appeared to make norms operational in MAS but they do not cope with compound activities. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to determine the set of applicable normative positions, i.e., the largest set of normative positions without conflicts in the state of an activity, and propagate them to the sub-activities. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.