contextual regulations in open multi-agent systems carolina howard felicíssimo advisor: prof....

Contextual Regulations in Open

Multi-Agent Systems

Carolina Howard Felicíssimo

Advisor: Prof. Carlos José Pereira de Lucena

April 11, 2006 2/44Carolina Howard Felicíssimo © LES/PUC-Rio

Agenda

• Contextual Regulations in Open Multi-Agent Systems

– What was done

– Motivations for future work

– Plans for future work


Contextual Regulations in Open MAS

What was done …



• An Approach for Contextual Regulations in Open MAS

– A Top-Down Contextual Modeling of Laws

– A Normative Meta-Ontology to Formalize the Regulatory Contexts

– A Rule Support to Compose and Retrieve Contextual Laws

• AAMAS-06 (2005, 10) / ICSE-06 DS (2005, 12) / AOIS-06 (2006, 02) / COIN-06 (2006, 02) / ASE-06 (2006, 02)


An Approach for Context Regulations in Open MAS

• A Top-Down Contextual Modeling of Laws:

– Actions are regulated through compositions of contextual laws

• Environment Laws:– Laws that are applied to all agents from the regulated environment

• Organization Laws:– Laws that are applied to all agents from the regulated organization

• Role Laws:– Laws that are applied to all agents playing the regulated role

• Interaction Laws:– Laws that are applied to all agents involved in the regulated interaction

Environment Laws

Organization Laws

Role Laws

Interaction Laws

LEGEND - Boundaries of:


An Approach for Contextual Regulations in Open MAS

• A Normative Meta-Ontology to Formalize the Regulatory Contexts:



Relaxing the CurrentContextual Regulation of Laws

CROM

Conflicting the CurrentContextual Regulation of Laws

Restricting the CurrentContextual Regulation of Laws



• A Rule Support to Compose and Retrieve Contextual Laws:

Rule 1- [ruleForEnvWithOEnv: (?Env belongsTo ?OEnv) (?OEnv hasNorm ?OEnvNorm) -> (?Env hasNorm ?OEnvNorm)]

Formula 1: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Environment instance =

C= 1

C1 Env. + OEnv.

C1 Brazil + South_America




Rule 4- [ruleForOrgWithMOrgEnvNorm: (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Org hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 5- [ruleForOrgWithOEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm: (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfMOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfMOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Org hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 1- [ruleForOrgWithMOrgNorm: (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg hasNorm ?MOrgNorm) -> (?Org hasNorm ?MOrgNorm)]

Rule 2- [ruleForOrgWithOrgEnvNorm: (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm) -> (?Org hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 3- [ruleForOrgWithOEnvOfOrgEnvNorm: (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Org hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm)]

Formula 2: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Organization instance =

C=

31



C1 Org. + MOrg.C2 Org. + OrgEnv.C3 Org. + OEnvOfOrgEnv.C4 Org. + MOrgEnv.C5 Org. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

C6 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv.C7 Org. + MOrg. + OEnvOfOrgEnv.C8 Org. + MOrg. + MOrgEnv.C9 Org. + MOrg. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

C10 Org. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv.C11 Org. + OrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C12 Org. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C13 Org. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C14 Org. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C15 Org. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

C16 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv.C17 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C18 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C19 Org. + MOrg. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C20 Org. + MOrg. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C21 Org. + MOrg. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C22 Org. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C23 Org. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C24 Org. + OrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C25 Org. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

C26 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv.C27 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C28 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C29 Org. + MOrg. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.C30 Org. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

C31 Org. + MOrg. + OrgEnv. + OEnvOfOrgEnv. + MOrgEnv. + OEnvOfMOrgEnv.

Legend for abbreviations:

Org.: OrganizationOrgEnv.: Organization’s EnvironmentOEnvOfOrgEnv.: Owner Environment of Organization’s EnvironmentMOrg.: Main OrganizationMOrgEnv.: Main Organization’s EnvironmentOEnvOfMOrgEnv.: Owner Environment of Main Organization’s Environment



C1 Hpie_Brazil + HpieC2 Hpie_Brazil + BrazilC3 Hpie_Brazil + South_AmericaC4 Hpie_Brazil + USAC5 Hpie_Brazil + North_America

C6 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + BrazilC7 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + South_AmericaC8 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + USAC9 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + North_America

C10 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + South_AmericaC11 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + USAC12 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + North_AmericaC13 Hpie_Brazil + South_America + USAC14 Hpie_Brazil + South_America + North_AmericaC15 Hpie_Brazil + USA + North_America

C16 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + South_AmericaC17 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + USAC18 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + North_AmericaC19 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + South_America + USAC20 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + South_America + North_AmericaC21 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + USA + North_AmericaC22 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + South_America + USAC23 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + South_America + North_AmericaC24 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + USA + North_AmericaC25 Hpie_Brazil + South_America + USA + North_America

C26 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + South_America + USAC27 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + South_America + North_AmericaC28 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + USA + North_AmericaC29 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + South_America + USA + North_AmericaC30 Hpie_Brazil + Brazil + South_America + USA + North_America

C31 Hpie_Brazil + Hpie + Brazil + South_America + USA + North_America




Rule 5- [ruleForRoleWithMOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 6- [ruleForRoleWithOEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfMOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfMOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 1- [ruleForRoleWithOrgNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasNorm ?OrgNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?OrgNorm)]

Rule 2- [ruleForRoleWithMOrgNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg hasNorm ?MOrgNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?MOrgNorm)]

Rule 3- [ruleForRoleWithOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 4- [ruleForRoleWithOEnvOfOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Role hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm)]

Formula 3: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Role instance =

C

= 63




Rule 6- [ruleForInterWithMOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?MOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 7- [ruleForInterWithOEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg isIn ?MOrgEnv) (?MOrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfMOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfMOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?OEnvOfMOrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 1- [ruleForInterWithRoleNorm: (?Role hasNorm ?RoleNorm) ->(?Inter hasNorm ?RoleNorm)]

Rule 2- [ruleForInterWithOrgNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasNorm ?OrgNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?OrgNorm)]

Rule 3- [ruleForInterWithMOrgNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org hasMainOrganization ?MOrg) (?MOrg hasNorm ?MOrgNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?MOrgNorm)]

Rule 4- [ruleForInterWithOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?OrgEnvNorm)]

Rule 5- [ruleForInterWithOEnvOfOrgEnvNorm: (?Role isPlayedIn ?Org) (?Org isIn ?OrgEnv) (?OrgEnv belongsTo ?OEnvOfOrgEnv) (?OEnvOfOrgEnv hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm) -> (?Inter hasNorm ?OEnvOfOrgEnvNorm)]

Formula 4: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Interaction instance = 2*

C

= 254



• With just 19 (meta-)ontology-driven rules, we have 349 different

compositions of laws for contextual regulations in Open MAS !!!

Formula 4: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Interaction instance = 2*

C

= 254

Formula 3: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Role instance =

C

= 63

Formula 1: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Environment instance =

C= 1

Formula 2: Total of Contextual Combinations of Laws for each Organization instance =

C=

31



Ontology

Rules

Inferred Ontology

Structure + Data

Composed Regulatory Contexts

Structure + Original Data + Inferred Data

Infer Data

(Inference Engine)



Motivations for future work …


AAMAS-06 Reviews’ Comments:

• Why constrain the number of contexts to four?

• Over which concept a penalty is applied to?

• When do you apply penalties for obligations? Obligations can have deadlines? How the time and constraints over it are specified in this ontology?

• What differences have your proposal with Defeasible Deontic Logics?

• How do you apply sanctions?

• IMO all the laws proposed can't be properly neither specified nor enforced.

• IMO a generic Normative Ontology should regulate actions according with their relationships (who,when,where,etc).

• IMO you need a richer Action ontology.

Motivations for future work ...


AAMAS-06 Reviews’ Comments:

• How rich is your class of Action? Is it taken from some existing ontology?

• Who enforces norms in your model?

• How you model norm/rule priorities?

• Is your ontology rich enough to deal with law evolution? Do laws have an applicability period in your model?

• What rule based engine do you use?

• Clarify what you do with respect to norm enforcement?

• What is the use of norms that are not enforced?

• The model seems reasonably expressive; the expressiveness of norms depends on the expressiveness of the action language. Can one say that it is forbidden to do A after having done B?



ICSE-06 Doctoral Symposium Reviews’ Comments:

• What is truly novel and significant in your work?

• I don't see any evidence (or any plans for collecting evidence) that the proposed abstractions of laws are better than any other.

• I don't see what is novel about the facility for enforcing laws.

• The tactics proposed for resolving conflicts look to be the same as have been proposed in the past for rule-based systems and for resolving feature interactions.

• I see no evidence that agents will be able to reason about laws, and I don't know what agents would do with this capability.

• What are the impact and effectiveness of some of these ideas?

• Can you demonstrate objectively and concretely that your ideas work and are helpful?

• What would be the criteria for determining and proving that they work?




ICSE-06 Doctoral Symposium Reviews’ Comments:

• A case study does not evaluate a thesis. You need to show conclusively that your thesis ideas advance the state of the art.

• In terms of contributions to the software engineering community, there are a number of aspects which are at present overlooked.

• The system must be able to solve disputes (who is responsible for the breach), as well as prove that a breach did occur. How do you know who is punishable? How do even detect breaches? The whole approach must be lightweight.

• What kind of reasoning do you intend to support? How?

• How expressive is your ontology?

• It does not seem to capture dependency among actions (action A is allowed only after action B), or time dependency (action A is allowed only if executed within t time units from action B).

• Priorities seem a rather poor way of resolving conflicts in this context; a much richer semantics seem needed, to associate different actions to different types of conflicts.



AOIS-06 Reviews’ Comments:

• How the approach deals with conflicting norms in many different levels?

• How, in practice, a software agent can be penalized?

• While I have no problems to accept that agents may "know", I have some problems to accept that systems may "know", unless you explain how you can "embody" a whole (composed) system as a single (agent-like) entity.

• An acts' ontology should be provided, inside your normative ontology, or it will be impossible to recognize semantic conflicts. Acts can be recognized as conflicting only if the two acts are ontologically classified. How do you deal with act classification?

• Do write some line of discussion about the law classification in the proposed contexts.

• “Automatic consistency check for pre-defined laws". Which kind of check is it? A logic/semantics based one. Which is the underlying formalism?



COIN-06 Reviews’ Comments:

• What are the difference among the terms "norm", "law“, “rule” and “regulation“?

• What is a regulatory context? How is it built?

• A very relevant work that deserves to be compared with the proposed approach is that of Garcia-Camino, A., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J. A., Sierra, C., Vasconcelos, W. W., A Distributed Architecture for Norm-Aware Agent Societies. Procs. 3rd International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (DALT'05), 25 July 2005, Utrecht, The Netherlands. They also use rules and pretty much propose an infrastructure to allow norm-aware agent societies to come about.

• How are the instances of ontologies prepared? By whom? How can one ensure are OK (verification)?

• Add an analysis of the current limitations of the ontology and the rule engine used, both in terms of expressiveness and reasoning capabilities.


COIN-06 Reviews’ Comments:

• Try to formally specify the semantics of the contextual relationships between normative contexts (including how to handle conflicts between super-contexts and sub-contexts).

• Try to formally specify the semantics of the rules for law retrieval, in terms of how an agent by enacting a given role is affected internally by the norms attached to the role in the context.

• The problem has been tackled by quite a big number of researchers so far. The work has yet to reach a development stage where we can see whether it is a promising alternative.

• The reader is allowed to evaluate the system by a provided implementation, in several different normative scenarios. Unfortunately, the authors do not deal with the most challenging one in this paper (conflicting laws). Let's hope in future work.




Common Reviews’ Comments:

• IMO you need a richer Action ontology. How rich is your class of Action? Is it taken from some existing ontology?

• The model seems reasonably expressive; the expressiveness of norms depends on the expressiveness of the action language. However, it does not seem to capture dependency among actions (action A is allowed only after action B), or time dependency (action A is allowed only if executed within t time units from action B).

• Add an analysis of the current limitations of the ontology and the rule engine used, both in terms of expressiveness and reasoning capabilities.

• I see no evidence that agents will be able to reason about laws, and I don't know what agents would do with this capability.

• How the approach deals with conflicting norms in many different levels?

• Why constrain the number of regulatory contexts to four?



Plans for future work …


Future work …

• Basically, four main research lines:

– Context and Context-Aware Systems

• Law Management and Evolution

– Ontologies

• Formally Specify Semantics for Agents’ Understanding

– Simulations / Action Selection and Access Control Mechanisms

• Analyze Agent Actions

– Use of Third-Party Libraries of Behaviors

• Analyze Agent Adaptations


Future work …

• Context and Context-Aware Systems

• Ontologies– Better detail (extending and instantiating) the normative meta-ontology for the e-

Business domain– Validate the detailed ontology and the ideas in the “International Semantic Web

Conference (ISWC)” and/or “International Conference on Rules and Markup Languages”. Deadline: May 15-06.

• Simulations / Action Selection and Access Control Mechanisms– Take a look in some Java Game Engines for Simulations of MAS in the DevMaster

catalog

• Use of third-party libraries of behaviors– Better study the MALEVA

• Compare the CROM Approach with Related Works from these Research Lines

DevMaster.net - 3D Game and Graphics Engines Databases

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/


• How to expres that all senders are Agents playing the Supplier Role?

Future work …


• How to express that all senders are Agents playing the Supplier Role?

Future work …


Future work …

• How to express that all senders are Agents playing the Hpie Brazil Supplier Role?

April 11, 2006 35/44Carolina Howard Felicíssimo © LES/PUC-Rio jMonkey Engine: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php?fid=6&sid=1


Future work …

• Agents knowing how to act ahead some environment variables

2005.1


Future work …

• Agents understanding the meaning of some environment variables

• Traffic Signs in US • Traffic Signs in Germany

• International Traffic Signs!?

• Traffic Signs in Brazil

1 3 4

5 6

21 2

5

3

6 7

2

Alfândega

3 4 5

7

2005.1


Future work …

• Agents knowing how to act ahead simulated unpredictable situations

2005.1

Questions ?

contextual regulations in open multi-agent systems carolina howard felicíssimo advisor: prof....

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