Leveraging commitments and goals in agent interaction

Modeling and regulating interactions among agents is a critical step in the development of Multiagent Systems (MASs). Some recent works assume a normative view, and suggest to model interaction protocols in terms of obligations. In this paper we propose to model interaction protocols in terms of goals and commitments, and show how such a formalization promotes a deliberative process inside the agents. In particular, we take a software engineering perspective, and balance the use of commitments against obligations inside interaction protocols. The proposal is implemented via JaCaMo+, an extension to JaCaMo, in which Jason agents can interact while preserving their deliberative capabilities by exploiting commitment-based protocols, reified by special CArtAgO artifacts. The paper shows how practical rules relating goals and commitments can be almost directly encoded as Jason plans to be used as building blocks in agent programming.