Interacting answer sets

Abstract

We consider agent societies represented by logic programs. Four different types of social interactions among agents, cooperation, competition, norms, and subjection, are formulated as interactions between answer sets of different programs. Answer sets satisfying conditions of interactions represent solutions coordinated in a multiagent society. A unique feature of our framework is that answer set interactions are specified outside of individual programs. This enables us to freely change the social specifications among agents without the need of modifying individual programs and to separate beliefs of agents from social requirements over them. Social interactions among agents are encoded in a single logic program using constraints. Coordinated solutions are then computed using answer set programming. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.