Ballroom etiquette: A Case Study for Norm-Governed Multi-Agent Systems

摘要

We present a case study which describes a ballroom as a social institution with autonomous dancer agents constrained by sets of norms and conventions that coordinate the behaviour of the participants. We provide a representation for the interaction protocols as finite state machines and a new way of formalising the associated norms in a logic programming language. Furthermore, we report on recent and ongoing work on an architecture for normative systems of this kind which allows agents to dynamically download interaction protocols and operational norms to guide their behaviour. Finally, we outline an alternative approach for representing the institutional state in a virtual, distributed fashion in the agents' private belief stores.