Keynote Speakers

Professor Frank P. M. Dignum from Utrecht University will give the keynote speech for the joint EMAS-COIN session on May 9, 2016 at 14:00.

Implementing Norms -- Why is it so difficult?

Many people have made implementations of norms or normative systems over the years. However, the implementations differ widely and no uniform methodology to implement normative systems seemed to have been developed. Why is it so difficult to implement norms? Can't we just have a Norms module that can be added to a system? I will discuss these issues and also point to some possible ways forward.

Professor Jaime Simão Sichman from Universidade de São Paul is the keynote speaker for the EMAS workshop. His talk is scheduled May 10 at 14:00.

Designing and Programming Multiagent Organizations

In the last years, social and organizational aspects of agency have become a major issue in MAS research. Recent applications of MAS on Web Services, Grid Computing and Ubiquitous Computing enforce the need of using these aspects in order to ensure some social order within these systems. One of the ways to assure such a social order is through the so-called multiagent organizations. Multiagent organizations are of two types: either the organization emerge from the activity of the individual agents or it is designed to facilitate and guide some specific global behavior. In the latter case, systems are characterized by the autonomy of the individual participants that however must be able to collaboratively achieve predetermined global goals, within a globally constrained environment. However, there is still a lack of a comprehensive view of the diverse concepts, models and approaches related to multiagent organizations. Moreover, most designers have doubts about how to put these concepts in practice, i.e., how to design and how to program them. This invited talk aims to give some possible answers to such questions.