Trust in Multi-Agent Systems

Research in Multi-Agent Systems has revealed that Agents must enter into a relationship voluntarily in order to collaborate, otherwise that collaborative efforts may fail [1,2]. When examining this problem, trust becomes the focus in promoting the ability to collaborate, however trust itself is defined from several perspectives. Trust between agents within Multi-Agent System may be analogous to the trust that is required between humans. A Trust, Negotiation, Communication model currently being developed, is based around trust and may be used as a basis for future research and the ongoing development of Multi-Agent System (MAS). This paper is focused on discussing how the architecture of an agent could be designed to provide it the ability to foster trust between agents and therefore to dynamically organise within a team environment or across distributed systems to enhance individual abilities. The Trust, Negotiation, Communication (TNC) model is a proposed building block that provides an agent with the mechanisms to develop a formal trust network both through cooperation1 or confederated or collaborative associations 2 . The model is conceptual, therefore discussion is limited to the basic framework.

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