-
Since in the core of software agent's de nition is the 'situatedness' property,
meaning it is immersed in an Environment it can both sense and alter, it is
mandatory to consider the Environment as an important component to be
speci ed for MAS. The Environment can thus be seen as an active medium to
facilitate how to reach consensus, agreements or mutual contracts. For an overview
of the role of the Environment in agent systems see [
2
] where the environment
has a dual role of providing conditions for the agents to exist and an
abstraction to design MAS. The authors also recognize the environment as a means
for communication, an organizational layer and a coordination infrastructure
which are issues we have also been working at [
3
]. However, besides being a
facilitator, an Environment can also be seen as a regulator. Normative
environments provide monitoring capabilities and enforcement mechanisms in uencing
agents' behaviour. Moreover, it also makes available relevant data important to
feed contextual-dependent trust models which, as a consequence, in uence
future possible negotiations leading to new agreements. Finally, the Environment
can also be exploited as representing the social medium in which relationships
take place and, thus, to play a more active role in supervising both agent actions
and behaviors. Acting as an encompassing society, the Environment can actively
decide on imposing either nes or incentives trying to punish/reward behaviors
that may be considered male cient/bene cial for that particular society.
3
ANTE Platform
Grounded on the recognition of the Environment as a relevant component to give
structure and support to situated MAS, we developed ANTE (Agreement
Negotiation in Normative and Trust-enabled Environments) a framework in which
agents can both establish agreements (and contracts) through supporting
negotiation protocols and bene t from monitoring capabilities that guarantee
transparency of joint activities. Through the development of ANTE software
platform, we intended to illustrate how an active environment is indeed a crucial
framework for safer, reliable and informed agents decision-making in which joint
agreements is concerned [
3
] [
4
]. In ANTE the Environment actively mediates
interaction among agents (enterprise or individual delegates), in di erent ways:
(a) as a Facilitator by providing negotiation protocols, Ontology translation
services and Contract building processes. In this perspective we can see it as
an Interaction-Mediation level[
2
] supporting access to resources and mediating
interaction between agents; (b) providing mechanisms for the normative
enactment of the agreements generating normative states and monitoring them
through both constitutive and institutional rules; (c) gathering relevant data on
contract ful lment and evaluating the enactment phase, progressively updating
socio-cognitive based Trust models improving the partners' selection process;
(d) Finally, seen as a social environment, it provides an adaptive deterrence
mechanism changing nes according to the population behaviour.