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Specification by Refinement and Agreement: Designing Agent Interaction Using Landmarks and Contracts

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Engineering Societies in the Agents World III (ESAW 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2577))

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that multi-agent systems developed to model and support organizations must on the one hand be able to describe and realize the goals and structure of that particular organization and on the other hand allow for autonomous behavior of participating actors. The agent autonomy should include collaboration autonomy, which means that agents can decide among each other how they want to cooperate. We present a model for agent societies and two techniques that can be used to achieve the described objectives: landmarks and contracts. The effects of these techniques on different agent society types are explored as well.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Infolab, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000, Tilburg, LE, The Netherlands

    Hans Weigand

  2. Achmea, P.O. Box 866, 3700, Zeist, AW, The Netherlands

    Virginia Dignum & Virginia Dignum

  3. University Utrecht, PO Box 80089, 3508, Utrecht, TB, The Netherlands

    John-Jules Meyer & Frank Dignum

Authors
  1. Hans Weigand
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  2. Virginia Dignum
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  3. John-Jules Meyer
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  4. Frank Dignum
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Agents and New Media Group, Schottengasse 3, 1010, Vienna, Austria

    Paolo Petta

  2. AG Netzbasierte Informationssysteme, Freie Universität Berlin Institut für Informatik, Takustr. 9, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Robert Tolksdorf

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi dell’Ingegneria, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Via Allegri 13, 42100, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Franco Zambonelli

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Weigand, H., Dignum, V., Meyer, JJ., Dignum, F. (2003). Specification by Refinement and Agreement: Designing Agent Interaction Using Landmarks and Contracts. In: Petta, P., Tolksdorf, R., Zambonelli, F. (eds) Engineering Societies in the Agents World III. ESAW 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2577. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-39173-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-39173-8_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-14009-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39173-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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