Stabilization of information sharing for queries answering in multiagent systems

Abstract

We consider multiagent systems situated in unpredictable environments. Agents viewed as abductive logic programs with abducibles being literals the agent could sense or receive from other agents, must cooperate to provide answers to users as they may not have the knowledge or the capabilities to sense relevant changes in their environment. As their surroundings may change unpredictably, agents may provide wrong answers to queries. Stabilization refers to a capability of the agents to eventually answer queries correctly despite unpredictable environment changes and the incapability of many agents to sense such changes.It could be viewed as the correctness criterium of communicating cooperative multiagent systems. For efficiency, a piece of information obtained from other agents may be used to answer many queries. Surprisingly, this natural form of "information sharing" may be a cause of non-stabilization of multiagent systems. We formulate postulates and present a formal framework for studying stabilization with information sharing and give sufficient conditions to ensure it. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.