Conflicting Agents: Conflict Management in Multi-Agent Systems

308 Pages·2002·13.13 MB·English

by  Catherine Tessier

CONFLICTING AGENTS
Conflict Management in
Multi-Agent Systems
MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS,
ARTIFICIAL SOCIETIES,
AND SIMULATED ORGANIZATIONS
International Book Series
Series Editor: Gerhard Weiss
Technische Universität München
Editorial Board:
Kathleen M. Carley, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA
Yves Demazeau, CNRS Laboratoire LEIBNIZ, France
Ed Durfee, University of Michigan, USA
Les Gasser, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
Michael Huhns, University of South Carolina, SC, USA
Nick Jennings, University of Southampton, UK
Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts, MA, USA
Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA
Gerhard Weiss, Technical University of Munich, Germany (Series Editor)
Michael Wooldridge, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
CONFLICTING AGENTS
Conflict Management in
Multi-Agent Systems
Edited by
Catherine Tessier
Onera-Cert, Toulouse, France
Laurent Chaudron
Onera-Cert, Toulouse, France
Heinz-Jürgen Müller
Deutsche Telekom, Darmstadt, Germany
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow
eBookISBN: 0-306-46985-5
Print ISBN: 0-792-37210-7
©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers
New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow
All rights reserved
No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher
Created in the United States of America
Visit Kluwer Online at: http://www.kluweronline.com
and Kluwer's eBookstore at: http://www.ebooks.kluweronline.com
To Jean-Marc Fouet
Contents
Preface xi
Contributing Authors xiii
1
Agents’ conflicts: new issues 1
Catherine Tessier Heinz-Jürgen Müller Humbert Fiorino Laurent Chaudron
1. Introduction 2
2. About conflicts in general 6
3. Two classes of conflicts 13
4. Towards a unified definition of conflict? 15
5. Conflict handling 16
6. Overview of the book 28
Part I Conflicts and agents: essentials
2
Conflicts within and for collaboration 33
Cristiano Castelfranchi and Rino Falcone
1. Introduction 33
2. A plan-based theory of delegation/adoption 35
3. Types and levels of delegation and related conflicts 38
4. Levels of control and relative conflicts 42
5. Adoption and conflict 46
6. Delegation roles and conflicts 54
7. Tutorial and paternalistic conflicts 56
8. Functional violations of norms and commitments 57
9. Conclusions 61
3
Their problems are my problems 63
Markus Hannebauer
1. Introduction 63
2. Internal Conflicts 65
3. External Conflicts 74
CONFLICTING AGENTS
4. Autonomous Dynamic Reconfiguration 84
5. Related Work 94
6. Conclusions 97
Appendix 99
4
Conflicts in social theory and MAS 111
Thomas Malsch Gerhard Weiss
1. Introduction 111
2. Different reasons for studying conflicts 115
3. Conflicts in the sociology of autopoietic social systems 119
4. Conflict in pragmatist sociology 126
5. Conflict and social change 136
6. Conclusion 144
Part II Conflicts of operational agents
5
Conflicts in agent teams 153
Hyuckchul Jung and Milind Tambe
1. Introduction 153
2. Domains and motivations 154
3. Teamwork model 156
4. Argument representation and evaluation 157
5. CONSA approach 159
6. Detailed example of implementation 164
7. Related work 166
8. Summary and future work 167
6
Conflict-based behaviour emergence in robotteams 169
Jacques Penders
1. Introduction 169
2. Team behaviour 172
3. Interaction: collisions and conflicts 181
4. Avoiding robots 190
5. Conclusion 201
7
Conflicts in collective robotics 203
Fabrice Chantemargue
1. Conflict in Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Artificial Intelli-
gence 204
2. Autonomous agents: basic concepts 205
3. Our view on emergence 206
4. An experimental multi-agent testbed 208
5. Results 211
6. Conclusion 219
PartIII Application centered agents’ conflicts
Contents
8
Strategic use of conflicts in tutoring systems 223
Esma Aïmeur
1. Introduction 223
2. Evolution of learning strategies in intelligent tutoring systems 225
3. Notions of conflicts 227
4. Cooperation and conflicts in ITS 232
5. Conflicts management 235
6. Experimentation 244
7. Results and discussion 245
8. Conclusion and perspectives 249
9
Conflict handling in collaborative search 251
Jörg Denzinger
1. Introduction 251
2. Search and multi-agent search 253
3. Multi-Agent Search based on Improving on the Competition Ap-
proach 258
4. Multi-Agent Search based on using a Common Search State 263
5. Multi-Agent Search based on Dividing the Problem into Subproblems 269
6. Conclusion 276
10
Conflict as a heuristic in the development of an interaction mechanics 279
William F. Lawless T. Castelão C.P. Abubucker
1. Introduction: traditional views of reality, R and convergence 280
2. Bistability 284
3. Solving ill-defined problems 287
4. Environmental remediation 288
5. The transition to interaction mechanics 292
6. Macro economics 297
7. Path forward 299
8. Conclusion 300
References 303
Index 333
Preface
Conflicts between agents acting in a multi-agent environment arise for dif-
ferent reasons, involve different concepts, and are dealt with in different ways,
depending on the kind of agents and on the domain where they are considered.
For example, agents may have conflicting beliefs, conflicting goals, or may
have to share limited resources. Conflicts may be expressed as mere differ-
ences, or as contradictions, or even as social conflicts. They may be avoided,
solved, kept, or even created deliberately.
Since more and more concern is attached to agents’ teamwork and agents’ di-
alogue, conflicts naturally arise as a key issue to be dealt with, not only with
application dedicated techniques, but also with more formal and generic tools.
The aim of this book is to focus on the management of conflicts in multi-
agent environments. It is the fruit of thoughts that have been discussed since
1993 in the occasion of several workshops held at IJCAI, AAAI and ECAI.
We deeply thank all the authors for their high-quality contributions and for
their cooperation during the editing process. We are most grateful to Jörg
Denzinger who gave us judicious advice that helped us putting together the
different chapters of the book, and to Jean-Pierre Chrétien who helped us solve
some tricky problems.
CATHERINETESSIER, LAURENTCHAUDRON AND HEINZ-JÜRGEN MÜLLER
xi
Contributing Authors
C.P. Abubucker
Paine College
1235 15th Street
Augusta, GA 30901-3182, USA
Esma Aïmeur
Université de Montréal
Département d’lnformatique et de Recherche Opérationnelle
2920 Chemin de la Tour
Montréal, H3C 3J7, Quebec, Canada
T. Castelão
Grand Valley State University
One Campus Drive
Allendale, MI 49401-9403, USA
Cristiano Castelfranchi
National Research Council - Institute of Psychology
Division of "Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive and Interaction Modelling"
Viale Marx, 15
00137 Roma, Italy
xiii