Presentation by Julia Schaumeier at the 2nd Awareness Workshop on Challenges for Achieving Self-awareness in Autonomic Systems @ SASO 2012, Lyon, France

1. Engineering Awareness in Open
Networks
Julia Schaumeier
AWARENESS PhD Forum @ SASO 2012
10 September 2012

2. Overview
Goal
Create institutions for self-organised resource allocation
Setting
Autonomous, heterogeneous agents in open, embedded and
resource-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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3. Two Research Questions
Q1: Is it possible to apply Elinor Ostrom’s socio-economic
principles to institutions for self-organised management of
open systems in resource-constraint environments?
Q2: Is it possible to ensure that the self-organisation is successful?
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4. Governing the Commons [Ostrom, 1990]
institutional rules:
conventionally agreed by affected agents, mutually
understood, monitored and enforced, mutable and nested
within higher-order rules (decisions → action situations)
typical allocation sequence:
(contribute →) demand → allocate → appropriate
system regulated by self-governing agents that ensure
responsible handling of the resource
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5. Dynamic Specification Framework [Artikis, 2011]
Norm-governed system specification for multiagent systems
Physical power, institutionalised power, and permission
Obligations, and other complex normative relations
Sanctions and penalties
Roles 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, and
for reasoning about effects of events
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6. Levels of Awareness
derived from neuroscience and psychology
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7. Question 1
Is it possible to apply Elinor Ostrom’s socio-economic principles
to institutions for self-organised management of open systems in
resource-constraint environments?
Yes, see SASO 2011 and Awareness Workshop 2011
Specified model uses Artikis’ framework to express Ostrom’s
elements of institutions for self-governing commons
Meta-protocols in the Event Calculus and notion of
institutionalised power implement nested higher-order rules
and action situations
Experimental testbed
Principles typically lead to a sustainable resource and make
systems more enduring
Principles have to be congruent with agents’ behaviour and
environment
Self-organisation important, no ‘one size fits all’ strategy
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8. Question 2
Is it possible to ensure that the self-organisation is successful?
Problem: implementation of principles requires careful design
and modification to be congruent with current state of
environment – not all developments anticipatable in design
phase
Hypothesis: Q2 is feasible using notions of self-awareness
(Planned) experimental testbed
To show what level of self-awareness keeps balance between
costs and movement in specification space (all rules/roles)
depending on population profile
Example: Fairness as social (self-)evaluation measure
level of predictive self-awareness
subjective a priori incentive for optimising collective welfare
objective a posteriori outcome metric
‘real world’ problem: smarter infrastructure management, like
smart grids
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9. Contributions
Theoretical AI: investigation of logical and computational
foundations of self-organising and self-aware norm-governed
multi-agent systems
Experimental AI: development of a testbed for animating
institutions for logic-based electronic systems
Application of AI: instantiation of abstract model for
management of energy distribution
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10. Thank you!
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