Enriching a MAS environment with institutional services

Abstract

Most environments for multi-agent systems limit themselves to providing message transport and white/yellow page services. While these are generic facilities, in some domains other services are necessary, which may map real-world services provided by institutions. The Electronic Institution concept represents the virtual counterpart of real-world institutions, and one of its benefits is to provide a regulated and trustful environment by enforcing norms and providing specific institutional services. This paper presents some of such institutional services. Ontology-based services are provided to assist agent interaction, making the establishment of business agreements more efficient. After the establishment of an agreement through an appropriate negotiation process, it is necessary to verify the execution of the resulting contract, For this, we introduce an institutional normative environment based on the concept of institutional reality and norms.