Joris Hulstijn

The BOID architecture: conflicts between beliefs, obligations, intentions and desires

In this paper we introduce the so-called Beliefs-Obligations-Intentions-Desires or BOID architecture. It contains feedback loops to consider all effects of actions before committing to them, and mechanisms to resolve conflicts between the outputs of its four components. Agent types such as realistic or social agents correspond to specific types of conflict resolution embedded in the BOID archecture.

Characterising deadlines in temporal modal defeasible logic

We provide a conceptual analysis of several kinds of deadlines, represented in Temporal Modal Defeasible Logic. The paper presents a typology of deadlines, based on the following parameters: deontic operator, maintenance or achievement, presence or absence of sanctions, and persistence after the deadline. The deadline types are illustrated by a set of examples.

Virtual Organizations as Normative Multiagent Systems

In this paper we propose a conceptual model of virtual organizations as normative multiagent systems. The dynamic aspects of virtual organizations are modeled using aspects of speech act theory and Searles theory of the construction of social reality. We illustrate the use of our model by discussing an example of distributed access control policies. We show how the model captures the distinction between local and global authorities, and between local and global norm enforcement policies.

Issues in Multiagent System Development

Methodologies for multiagent system development should assist the developer in making decisions about those aspects of the analysis, design and implementation, that are crucial for multiagent systems, namely, social and cognitive concepts (e.g. norms and goals). In this paper, we review existing agent-oriented methodologies. We conclude that there is a big gap between the analysis and design models and the implementation. We identify some open issues for multiagent system development. We introduce our vision of a development methodology for multiagent systems, based on the OperA analysis models and the agent-oriented programming language 3APL.

Value-based argumentation for justifying compliance

Compliance is often achieved ‘by design’ through a coherent system of controls consisting of information systems and procedures. This system-based control requires a new approach to auditing in which companies must demonstrate to the regulator that they are ‘in control’. They must determine the relevance of a regulation for their business, justify which set of control measures they have taken to comply with it, and demonstrate that the control measures are operationally effective. In this paper we show how value-based argumentation theory can be applied to the compliance domain. Corporate values motivate the selection of control measures (actions) which aim to fulfil control objectives, i.e. adopted norms (goals). In particular, we show how to formalize the audit dialogue in which companies justify their compliance decisions to regulators using value-based argumentation. The approach is illustrated by a case study of the safety and security measures adopted in the context of EU customs regulation.

Managing legal interpretation in regulatory compliance

Maintaining regulatory compliance is an increasing area of concern for business. Legal Knowledge Management systems that combine repositories of legislation with legal ontologies can support the work of in-house compliance managers. But there are challenges to overcome, of interpreting legal knowledge and mapping that knowledge onto business processes, and developing systems that can adequately handle the complexity with clarity and ease. In this paper we extend the Legal Knowledge Management system Eunomos to deal with alternative interpretations of norms connecting it with Business Process Management systems. Moreover, we propose a workflow involving the different roles in a company, which takes legal interpretation into account in mapping norms and processes, using Eunomos as a support.

Control patterns in a healthcare network

To keep a network of enterprises sustainable, inter-organizational control measures are needed to detect or prevent opportunistic behaviour of network participants. We present a requirements engineering method for understanding control problems and designing solutions, based on an economic value perspective. The methodology employs a library of so-called control patterns, inspired by design patterns in software engineering. A control pattern is a generic solution for a common control problem. The usefulness and adequacy of the control patterns is demonstrated by a case study of the governance and control mechanisms of the Dutch public health insurance network for exceptional medical expenses (AWBZ).

Inferring trust

In this paper we discuss Liaus logic of Belief, Inform and Trust (BIT), which captures the use of trust to infer beliefs from acquired information. However, the logic does not capture the derivation of trust from other notions. We therefore suggest the following two extensions. First, like Liau we observe that trust in information from an agent depends on the topic of the information. We extend BIT with a formalization of topics which are used to infer trust in a proposition from trust in another proposition, if both propositions have the same topics. Second, for many applications, communication primitives other than inform are required. We extend BIT with questions, and discuss the relationship with belief, inform and trust. An answer to a question can lead to trust, when the answer conforms to the beliefs of the agent.

ACL Semantics Between Social Commitments and Mental Attitudes

There are two main traditions in defining a semantics for agent communication languages, based either on mental attitudes or on social commitments. In this paper, we translate both traditions in a different approach in which the dialogue state is represented by the beliefs and goals publicly attributed to the roles played by the dialogue participants. On the one hand, this approach avoids the problems of mentalistic semantics, such as the unverifiability of private mental states. On the other hand, it allows to reuse the logics and implementations developed for FIPA compliant approaches.

Interaction in Normative Multi-Agent Systems

The central research question of this paper is how notions developed in interactive computing such as abstract behavior types, the coordination language Reo, and Boolean circuits with registers, can be used to extend logical input/output nets, or lions for short. Lions are based on input/output logic, a deontic logic which is not used as a (non-classical) inference engine deriving output from input, but as a secretarial assistant for logically assisted transformations from input to output. We consider two extensions of input/output logics and lions. First, we consider input/output logics defined on infinite sequences (or streams) of inputs and outputs. Secondly, we consider lions with AND and register gates, formalizing the behavior of channels and connectors. We discuss also the role of interactive computing in normative multi-agent systems motivating the development of lions.