On Social Commitment, Roles and Preferred Goals Paola A. Attadio

Introduction This papers present a framework for modelling various types of influences on an agent’s prioritising of its goals, with emphasis on obligations arising from the agent’s roles in designated relationships. Social commitment: an agent socially committed to another loses some of its autonomy. Roles and relationship provide structure for social commitments, as well as an abstaction over which certain important properties can be reasoned about. Social commitment is captured in the framework via the goals automatically adopted when the role is taken on.

Goals, intentions and preferences Desires, goals, intentions Predicates: –BEL( a,  ): agent a believes that  holds. –DES( a,  ): agent a holds a desire towards . –GOAL( a,  ): agent a has the goal . –INT( a,  ): agent a has an intention towards . Definition: GOAL( a,  )  BEL( a, Achvble( a,  )) Achvble( a,  ): it is possible for a to achieve .

Goals, intentions and preferences Preference and intention hierarchies Predicate: Pref( a, ,  )(t): at time t, agent a “prefers”  to  to hold. Definition: –INT( a,  )  GOAL( a,  )  BEL( a, Coherent( a,  )) Coherent( a,  ):  is mutually satisfiable with any intention  which is preferred to it in a ‘s goal preference hierarchy.

Roles and relationships Representing roles and relationships Sorts –Agent –Role –Reln –RelType Predicates: –RoleOf( , R):  is one of the roles in relationships of type R. –ln( a, , r): agent a is in role  of relationship r. e.g.: ln(stan,supervisor, r 1 ) ln(brenda,student,r 1 ) ln(oliver,supervisor,r 2 ) ln(jhon,student, r 2 )

Roles and relationships Roles and adopted goals Predicate: RoleGoal( ,  ): adppting the role  involves adopting the goald . Definition: RoleGoal( ,  )  ln( a, , r)  Goal( a,  ) Roles and influence Predicate: Influence( a, , r 1 , , r 2  ): role  in r 1 is more influential to a than role  in r 2.

Team plans and social commitments Team plans provide structure for collaborative activity, group commitments and role-based interaction. Further, a team plan can provide a framework for communication and synchronisation of the individual actions required for carrying out the group activity. A team plan is a plan which is selected for execution by a team of agents.