Open systems are characterized by heterogeneous participants which can enter or leave the
system at will. Typical examples are e-commerce applications or information agent systems …

Deontic logic as a way of formally reasoning about norms, an important area in AI and law,
has traditionally concerned itself about formalising provisions of general statutes. Despite …

Human societies have long used the capability of argumentation and dialogue to overcome
and resolve conflicts that may arise within their communities. Today, there is an increasing …

In this paper we address the problem of defining social roles in multi-agent systems. Social
roles provide the basic structure of social institutions and organizations. We start from the …

One of the main challenges faced by the multi-agent community is to ensure the
coordination of autonomous agents in open heterogeneous multi-agent systems. In order to …

In the design of the organisation of a multiagent system the concept of role is fundamental.
We informally analyse this concept through examples. Then we propose a more formal …

This paper reports on two case-studies of applying BAN logic to industrial strength security
protocols. These studies demonstrate the flexibility of the BAN language, as it caters for the …

This article deals with the interrelation of deontic operators in contracts--an aspect often
neglected when considering only one of the involved parties. On top of an automata-based …

The process of planning in complex, multi-actor environment depends strongly on the ability
of the individual actors to perform intelligent decommitment upon specific changes in the …

Over these past years, formal reasoning about contracts between parties participating in a
transaction has been increasingly explored in the literature. There has been a shift of view …