Sergio Saugar

Operational semantics of multiagent interactions

The social stance advocated by institutional frameworks and most multiagent system methodologies has resulted in a wide spectrum of organizational and communicative abstractions which have found currency in several programming frameworks and software platforms. Still, these tools and frameworks are designed to support a limited range of interaction capabilities that constrain developers to a fixed set of particular, pre-defined abstractions. The main hypothesis motivating this paper is that the variety of multiagent interaction mechanisms -- both, organizational and communicative, share a common semantic core. In the realm of software architectures, the paper proposes a connector-based model of multiagent interactions which attempts to identify the essential structure underlying multiagent interactions. Furthermore, the paper also provides this model with a formal execution semantics which describes the dynamics of social interactions. The proposed model is intended as the abstract machine of an organizational programming language which allows programmers to accommodate an open set of interaction mechanisms.

Dealing with incomplete normative states

This paper puts forward a normative framework for computational societies which enables the handling of incomplete knowledge about normative relations. In particular, attempts to perform a social action are evaluated as permitted, prohibited (i.e. not permitted) or pending for execution (i.e. neither permitted nor prohibited). This latter category of attempts can eventually be resolved as permitted or prohibited attempts using the speech acts allow and forbid. We make use of the support for incompleteness of action language K in the formalisation of the framework. The proposal will be illustrated with some scenarios drawn from the management of university courses.

Run-Time Semantics of a Language for Programming Social Processes

There is a broad range of application domains which can be described under the heading of social process domains: business processes, social networks, game servers, etc. This paper puts forward a programming language approach to the formal specification of social processes, building upon the C+ action description language. Particularly, the paper focuses on the run-time semantics of the language, which is delivered as a core layer of application-independent sorts which make up the abstract machine of the language. The advantages of the presented approach with respect to other state-of-the-art proposals lie in its strong support for modularity and reusability, and hence for the development of large-scale, elaboration tolerant, specifications of social processes.

A Web-Based Virtual Machine for Developing Computational Societies

Different theoretical and practical insights into the field of computational organisations and electronic institutions has led to a clear separation of concerns between societal and agent-based features in the implementation of multiagent systems. From a theoretical perspective, this separation of concerns is also at the core of recent proposals towards a societalprogramming language. Building on the operational model of one of these proposals, this paper addresses the practical issue of implementing a web-based virtual machine for that language. The resulting framework is intended to be used in a wide range of applications, all of them related to the implementation of social processes (business processes, social networks, etc.).

An architectural perspective on multiagent societies

This paper attempts to provide an architectural foundation to multiagent societies through a systematic application of the notion of software connector. It shows that multiagent societies can be explained as a Component & Connector architectural style, made up of high-level connectors defined in terms of common normative, communicative and organizational abstractions. This is expected to yield a better alignment of agent technology with mainstream software engineering practice and conventional architectural styles. Moreover, we show that connectors are a powerful metaphor for the design of organizational and communicative abstractions. Last, the paper challenges a common architectural assumption, namely the application-independence of software connectors.

Programming social middleware through social interaction types

This paper describes a type-oriented approach to the programming of social middleware. It defines a collection of metamodeling features which allow programmers to declare the social entity types which make up the program of a multiagent society for some application domain. These features are identified and formalised taking into account a specification of social middleware as programmable, abstract machines. Thus, the proposed approach results in the type system of an interaction-oriented programming language. The paper uses the C+ action language and the CCalc tool as formal devices, so that metamodeling features are given formal semantics as new social law abbreviations which complement the causal law abbreviations of C+. This programming language approach contrasts with the informal modeling approach endorsed by organizational methodologies, and promotes higher levels of formality, modularity and reusability in the specification of multiagent societies.

Reusable components for implementing agent interactions

Engineering component interactions is a major challenge in the development of large-scale, open systems. In the realm of multiagent system research, organizational abstractions have been proposed to overcome the complexity of this task. However, the gap between these modeling abstractions, and the constructs provided by todays agent-oriented software frameworks is still rather big. This paper reports on the

Engineering agent interactions from ACL-based reusable connectors

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A contextual reading of conditional commitments

multiagent programming framework, which provides executable constructs for each of the organizational, ACL-based modeling abstractions of the

Dealing with Incomplete Normative States.

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