NBDI: An Architecture for Goal-oriented Normative Agents

Normative regulation is a mechanism of social control that regulates the behaviour of autonomous agents indicating that such agents are permitted, obligated or prohibited to achieve something in the world, and defining rewards by stating stimulus to their fulfilment and punishments by discouraging their violation. Since goal-oriented agents‘ priority is the accomplishment of their own desires, they must evaluate the pros and cons associated with the fulfilment or violation of the norms before choosing to comply or not with them. In this context, we propose an extension to the BDI architecture by including norms related functions to check the incoming perceptions (including norms), select the norms they intend to fulfil based on the benefits they provide to the achievement of the agent‘s desires and intentions, and decide to cope or not with the norms while dropping, retaining or adopting new intentions. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through an non-combatant evacuation scenario implemented by using the Normative Jason platform.