Merging Roles in Coordination and in Agent Deliberation

Abstract

In this paper we generalize and merge two models of roles used in multiagent systems which address complementary aspects: enacting roles and communication among roles in an organization or institution. We do this by proposing a metamodel of roles and specializing the metamodel to two existing models. We show how the two approaches can be integrated since they deal with complementary aspects: Boella [1] focuses on roles as a way to specify interactions among agents, and, thus, it emphasizes the public character of roles. [2] focuses instead on how roles are played, and thus it emphasizes the private aspects of roles: how the beliefs and goals of the roles become the beliefs and goals of the agents. The former approach focuses on the dynamics of roles in function of the communication process. The latter focuses on agents internal dynamics when they start playing a role or shift the role they are currently playing. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.