Engineering Awareness in OpenNetworks

Julia Schaumeier

AWARENESS PhD Forum @ SASO 2012

10 September 2012

Overview

Goal

Create institutions for self-organised resource allocation

Setting

Autonomous, heterogeneous agents in open, embedded andresource-constrained systems

exogenous and endogenous events change environment

intentional non-compliance and accidental malfunction

Tools

Ostrom: self-governing commons and evolution of institutions

Artikis: dynamic specifications of open agent systems

Self-awareness for introspection and evaluation

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Two Research Questions

Q1: Is it possible to apply Elinor Ostrom’s socio-economicprinciples to institutions for self-organised management ofopen systems in resource-constraint environments?

Q2: Is it possible to ensure that the self-organisation is successful?

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Governing the Commons [Ostrom, 1990]

institutional rules:conventionally agreed by affected agents, mutuallyunderstood, monitored and enforced, mutable and nestedwithin higher-order rules (decisions → action situations)

typical allocation sequence:(contribute →) demand → allocate → appropriate

system regulated by self-governing agents that ensureresponsible handling of the resource

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Dynamic Specification Framework [Artikis, 2011]

Norm-governed system specification for multiagent systems

Physical power, institutionalised power, and permissionObligations, and other complex normative relationsSanctions and penaltiesRoles and actions (communication language)

Protocol stack: object-/meta-/meta-meta-/etc. level protocols

Specification space (DoFs)

Axiomatisation in the Event Calculus

general purpose action language for representing events, andfor reasoning about effects of events

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Levels of Awareness

derived from neuroscience and psychology

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Question 1

Is it possible to apply Elinor Ostrom’s socio-economic principlesto institutions for self-organised management of open systems inresource-constraint environments?

Yes, see SASO 2011 and Awareness Workshop 2011

Specified model uses Artikis’ framework to express Ostrom’selements of institutions for self-governing commons

Meta-protocols in the Event Calculus and notion ofinstitutionalised power implement nested higher-order rulesand action situations

Experimental testbed

Principles typically lead to a sustainable resource and makesystems more enduringPrinciples have to be congruent with agents’ behaviour andenvironmentSelf-organisation important, no ‘one size fits all’ strategy

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Question 2

Is it possible to ensure that the self-organisation is successful?

Problem: implementation of principles requires careful designand modification to be congruent with current state ofenvironment – not all developments anticipatable in designphase

Hypothesis: Q2 is feasible using notions of self-awareness

(Planned) experimental testbed

To show what level of self-awareness keeps balance betweencosts and movement in specification space (all rules/roles)depending on population profileExample: Fairness as social (self-)evaluation measure

level of predictive self-awarenesssubjective a priori incentive for optimising collective welfareobjective a posteriori outcome metric

‘real world’ problem: smarter infrastructure management, likesmart grids

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Contributions

Theoretical AI: investigation of logical and computationalfoundations of self-organising and self-aware norm-governedmulti-agent systems

Experimental AI: development of a testbed for animatinginstitutions for logic-based electronic systems

Application of AI: instantiation of abstract model formanagement of energy distribution

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Thank you!

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