Verifying norm compliancy of protocols

Abstract

There is a wide agreement on the use of norms in order to specify the expected behaviour of agents in open MAS. However, in highly regulated domains, where norms dictate what can and cannot be done, it can be hard to determine whether a desired goal can actually be achieved without violating the norms. To help the agents in this process, agents can make use of predefined (knowledge-based) protocols, which are designed to help reach a goal without violating any of the norms. But how can we guarantee that these protocols are actually norm-compliant? Can these protocols really realise results without violating the norms? In this paper we introduce a formal method, based on program verification, for checking the norm compliance of (knowledge-based) protocols. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.