Towards the norm-aware agent: Bridging the gap between deontic specifications and practical mechanisms for norm monitoring and norm-aware planning

Abstract

In the agents' literature, norms have been studied from multiple perspectives, but while formalisations tend to be disconnected from possible implementations due to the lack of differentiation between abstract norm and norm instantiation, on the other hand implementations tend to be weak groundings of deontic logics, tightly coupled to one particular implementation domain. Furthermore, different formalisations are typically used for norm enforcement and norm reasoning. In this paper we report on our attempt to bridge this gap by reducing from deontic statements to structural operational semantics (for norm monitoring) and to planning control rules (for practical normative reasoning). We hint at the feasibility of the translation of these semantics to actual implementation languages (Clojure and Drools for norm monitoring and TLPlan for norm-aware planning). Finally we discuss the limitations of our approach and suggest some improvements and future lines of research. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.