Skip Navigation

Journal of Logic and Computation 2002 12(1):55-117; doi:10.1093/logcom/12.1.55
© 2002 by Oxford University Press
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (10)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Panzarasa, P.
Right arrow Articles by Norman, T. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Original Article

Formalizing Collaborative Decision-making and Practical Reasoning in Multi-agent Systems

Pietro Panzarasa1, Nicholas R. Jennings2 and Timothy J. Norman3

1 Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Email: pp{at}ecs.soton.ac.uk 2 Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Email: nrj{at}ecs.soton.ac.uk 3 Dept. of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, UK. Email: tnorman{at}csd.abdn.ac.uk

In this paper, we present an abstract formal model of decision-making in a social setting that covers all aspects of the process, from recognition of a potential for cooperation through to joint decision. In a multi-agent environment, where self-motivated autonomous agents try to pursue their own goals, a joint decision cannot be taken for granted. In order to decide effectively, agents need the ability to (a) represent and maintain a model of their own mental attitudes, (b) reason about other agents' mental attitudes, and (c) influence other agents' mental states. Social mental shaping is advocated as a general mechanism for attempting to have an impact on agents' mental states in order to increase their cooperativeness towards a joint decision. Our approach is to specify a novel, high-level architecture for collaborative decision-making in which the mentalistic notions of belief, desire, goal, intention, preference and commitment play a central role in guiding the individual agent's and the group's decision-making behaviour. We identify preconditions that must be fulfilled before collaborative decision-making can commence and prescribe how cooperating agents should behave, in terms of their own decision-making apparatus and their interactions with others, when the decision-making process is progressing satisfactorily. The model is formalized through a new, many-sorted, multi-modal logic.

Keywords: Multi-agent systems; BDI logic; joint mental attitudes; inter-agent social behaviour

Received 25 September 1999.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.