Representing and monitoring social commitments using the event calculus

• Published in: Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 85 - 130
• Main Authors: Chesani, Federico, Mello, Paola, Montali, Marco, Torroni, Paolo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.07.2013; Springer
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artificial Intelligence; Biological and medical sciences; Computer Science; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social interactions. Communication. Group processes; Social psychology; Software; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Multiagent systems; Event calculus; On-line monitoring; Social commitments; On line; Modelling language; Social network; Axiomatic; Multiagent system; Reasoning; Metric; Monitoring; Ambiguity
• ISSN: 1387-2532; 1573-7454
• DOI: 10.1007/s10458-012-9202-0

Multiagent social commitments provide a principled basis for agent interactions, and serve as a natural tool to resolve design ambiguities. Indeed, they have been the subject of considerable research for more than a decade. However, the take-up of the social commitments paradigm is yet to come. To explain this negative result, we pinpoint a number of shortcomings, which this article aims to address. We extend current commitment modelling languages, thus leveraging expressive possibilities that were precluded by previous formalizations. We propose a novel axiomatization of commitment operations in a first order Event Calculus framework, that accommodates reasoning with data and metric time. Finally, we illustrate how publicly available implementations can be exploited for commitment monitoring purposes.