Learning, Information Exchange, and Joint-Deliberation through Argumentation in Multi-agent Systems

Ontañón, Santi; Plaza, Enric

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88875-8_34

Cited by 15 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Most approaches for case-based argumentation in MAS (which use cases as previous knowledge to manage arguments) have this domain dependency or centralise the case-based argumentation abilities in a mediator agent (e.g., [31], [24], [4]). One research work that is close to the approaches on case-based argumentation is the work on experiencebased argumentation using association rules, presented as the PADUA protocol in [33].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An ontological-based knowledge-representation formalism for case-based argumentation

2014

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In open multi-agent systems, agents can enter or leave the system, interact, form societies, and have dependency relations with each other. In these systems, when agents have to collaborate or coordinate their activities to achieve their objectives, their different interests and preferences can come into conflict. Argumentation is a powerful technique to harmonise these conflicts. However, in many situations the social context of agents determines the way in which agents can argue to reach agreements. In this paper, we advance research in the computational representation of argumentation frameworks by proposing a new ontological-based, knowledge-representation formalism for the design of open MAS in which the participating software agents are able to manage and exchange arguments with each other taking into account the agents' social context. This formalism is the core of a case-based argumentation framework for agent societies. In addition, we present an example of the performance of the formalism in a real domain that manages the requests received by the technicians of a call centre.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An ontological-based knowledge-representation formalism for case-based argumentation

2014

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“…These proposals are highly domain-specific (e.g. persuasion in negotiation (Sycara, 1990), sensor networks (Soh and Tsatsoulis, 2005) and classification (Ontañón and Plaza, 2007)) or centralise the argumentation functionality either in a mediator agent, which manages the dialogue between the agents of the system (Tolchinsky et al, 2007), or in a specific module of the system itself (Karacapilidis and Papadias, 2001). …”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards real-time agreements

Navarro

Heras

Botti

et al. 2013

Expert Systems with Applications

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In this paper, we deal with the problem of real-time coordination with the more general approach of reaching real-time agreements in MAS. Concretely, this work proposes a real-time argumentation framework in an attempt to provide agents with the ability of engaging in argumentative dialogues and come with a solution for their underlying agreement process within a bounded period of time. The framework has been implemented and evaluated in the domain of a customer support application. Concretely, we consider a society of agents that act on behalf of a group of technicians that must solve problems in a Technology Management Centre (TMC) within a bounded time. This centre controls every process implicated in the provision of technological and customer support services to private or public organisations by means of a call centre. The contract signed between the TCM and the customer establishes penalties if the specified time is exceeded.Keywords: Agreement Technologies, Real-Time, Multi-Agent Systems MotivationMany Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) operate in resource and time-constrained environments. In such domains, scarce resources must be shared between di↵erent agents taking into account that these agents must perform their tasks before a deadline is met. In addition, agents in open MAS are autonomous entities that can have their own knowledge resources, can play di↵erent roles and can have di↵erent objectives and preferences over values that they want to promote with their actions (e.g. an interested agent could want In this paper, we deal with the problem of real-time coordination with the more general approach of reaching real-time agreements in MAS. Therefore, our notion of a real-time agreement may refer to the fair allocation of a scarce resource, but also to the outcome of a negotiation process to make a deal in a sale operation, to the final label assigned in a classification problem, to the final state of the beliefs database of an agent in a beliefs revision problem, and many more. However, any of these processes must be temporal bounded. This is an important aspect to consider in any real-time argumentative process, where a community of agents are able to reach agreements through argumentation before a deadline is met. Any agreement reached after this deadline will be considered of a low quality, or even not valid if we are in a hard real-time environment. Therefore, it is necessary to control every step of the argumentative process in order to predict its duration in time (i.e. we must know the temporal cost of executing each step of the process). Taking into account this prediction, we can guarantee that the agents engaged in the argumentation dialogue will reach an agreement about the outcome of the agreement process (e.g. they will decide the final allocation for a resource, the label of an individual in a classification problem, etc.) before the specified deadline is met. The response provided by the agents does not need to be optimal, since in some cases the best response may require more proce...

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“…These proposals are highly domainspecific (e.g. persuasion in negotiation [44], sensor networks [43] and classification [31]) or centralise the argumentation functionality either in a mediator agent, which manages the dialogue between the agents of the system [46], or in a specific module of the system itself [24].…”

Section: Computational Requirements For Arguments In Agent Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On a Computational Argumentation Framework for Agent Societies

Heras

Botti

Juli

2011

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Learning, Information Exchange, and Joint-Deliberation through Argumentation in Multi-agent Systems

Cited by 15 publications

References 9 publications

An ontological-based knowledge-representation formalism for case-based argumentation

An ontological-based knowledge-representation formalism for case-based argumentation

Towards real-time agreements

On a Computational Argumentation Framework for Agent Societies

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