Utility-Based Approach to Represent Agents' Conversational Preferences

Abstract

With the growing interest in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) based solutions, one can find multiple MAS conceptions and implementations dedicated to the same goal. Those systems with their complex behaviors are rarely predictable. They may provide different results according to agents' interactions sequences. Consequently, evaluation of the quality of MAS returned results became an urgent need. Our approach is interested in evaluating high level data by considering agent's preferences regarding performatives. By analogy with the economic field, agents may ask for services, so they are consumers and may receive different possible answers to their requests from other agents which are producers. We will then focus on the analysis of messages exchanged within standard interaction protocols and compute the utility value associated to every conversation. Then we conclude utility measures for each agent and for the whole MAS regarding some execution results. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.