Abstract
Multi-agents systems are composed of autonomous and possibly heterogeneous software agents that act according to their own interests. Some coordination mechanism must be adopted to ensure a proper functioning of the whole system. Norms can be viewed as a powerful means to regulate and influence the behaviour of the agents by specifying, for instance, obligations, permissions, or prohibitions in a given context. A critical issue that must be considered in a system governed by multiple norms is the possible existence of normative conflicts. A conflict between norms is a situation in which the fulfillment of a norm causes a violation of another one. In this paper, we present several techniques that have been proposed to detect and resolve normative conflicts in multi-agent systems. Our aim is to organize the literature, present a classification of the techniques found, and provide a means to compare alternative approaches dealing with normative conflicts.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1236-1282 |
Number of pages | 47 |
Journal | Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 6 |
Early online date | 1 Apr 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2017 |
Keywords
- Norms
- Conflict detection
- Conflict resolution
- Multi-agent systems