Regulated Open Multi-Agent Systems Based on Contracts

Regulated Open multi-agent systems are composed by heterogeneous and autonomous agents which may need to coexist in a complex social and legal frame work that can evolve to address the different and often conflicting objectives of the many stakeholders involved. Of the ways in which agent behaviour can be regulated in a multi-agent system, contracts seem to be the most appropriate for industrial environments. This paper analyzes the open challenges in the development of these kind of systems. It also proposes an architecture and a designing method which face up to these challenges by means of the integration of open multi-agent systems, service-oriented architectures, e-contracting and regulation enforcement mechanisms.

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