Semantics in Multi-agent Systems
In this chapter we discuss how semantic technologies in general and specific Semantic Web standards in particular can contribute to the goal of achieving interoperability between independent, loosely coupled, heterogeneous, autonomous software components
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Semantics in Multi-agent Systems Nicoletta Fornara, Gordan Ježi´c, Mario Kušek, Ignac Lovrek, Vedran Podobnik, and Krunoslav Tržec
7.1 Introduction In this chapter we discuss and report some examples of how semantic technologies in general and specific Semantic Web standards in particular can contribute to the goal of achieving interoperability between independent, loosely coupled, heterogeneous, autonomous software components (that we call agents). These components need to interact, negotiate, compete, or collaborate in order to reach their own goals in an open framework, that is, in a framework where those software agents dynamically start or stop to interact with other agents without being specifically programmed for interacting with a specific counterpart. Examples of application domains where this ability is fundamental are eCommerce and eProcurement (for example for the specification of B2B or B2C electronic auctions or e-markets where different parties may buy or sell products in Sardinha et al. (2009) and Milicic et al. (2008)), eBusiness (for example for the dynamic creation of supply chains or virtual enterprises (Collins et al. 2010; Podobnik et al. 2008)), and resource sharing systems (for example systems for data, video, audio, or photo sharing (Bojic et al. 2011; Podobnik et al. 2010a)).
N. Fornara () Università della Svizzera italiana, via G. Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] G. Ježi´c • M. Kušek • I. Lovrek • V. Podobnik Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] K. Tržec Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: [email protected] S. Ossowski (ed.), Agreement Technologies, Law, Governance and Technology Series 8, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5583-3__7, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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The problem of interoperability between autonomous components in an open framework has the following two crucial characteristics: • No assumptions can be made about the internal structure of the interacting parties and about their willingness to satisfy the rules, the norms, the interaction protocols, or the agreements reached with other agents; • The interacting agents for planning their future communicative and non communicative actions need to have an expectation on the future actions of the other agents and therefore they need to be able to assume that every agent will derive the same conclusions from the information received. Therefore they need to share a common semantics for the meaning of the exchanged messages. In order that the interaction among autonomous parties may lead to states having some global desirable properties, it is crucial to constrain agents’ actions with a set of norms, rules, or protocols. In this chapter in Sect. 7.2 we will present and discuss how Semantic Web Technologies are used for modeling and reasoning on the content of agent communicative acts, on the speci
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