Norm-based behaviour modification in BDI agents

While there has been much work on developing frameworks and models of norms and normative systems, consideration of the impact of norms on the practical reasoning of agents has attracted less attention. The problem is that traditional agent architectures and their associated languages provide no mechanism to adapt an agent at runtime to norms constraining their behaviour. This is important because if BDI-type agents are to operate in open environments, they need to adapt to changes in the norms that regulate such environments. In response, in this paper we provide a technique to extend BDI agent languages, by enabling them to enact behaviour modification at runtime in response to newly accepted norms. Our solution consists of creating new plans to comply with obligations and suppressing the execution of existing plans that violate prohibitions. We demonstrate the viability of our approach through an implementation of our solution in the AgentSpeak(L) language.

Describing Web Service Architectures through Design-by-Contract

Architectural description languages (ADLs) are used to specify a high-level, compositional view of a software application, specifying how a system is to be composed from coarse-grain components. ADLs usually come equipped with a formal dynamic semantics, facilitating specification and analysis of distributed and event-based systems. In this paper, we describe the TrustME, an ADL framework that provides both a process and a structural view of web service-based systems. We use Petri-net descriptions to give a dynamic view of business workflow for web service collaboration. We adapt the approach of Schmidt to define a form of Meyer's design-by-contract for configuring workflow architectures. This serves as a configuration-level means of constructing safer, more robust systems.

An Agent-Based Approach to Real-Time Patient Identification for Clinical Trials

Patient recruitment for clinical trials is expensive and has been a significant challenge, with many trials not achieving their recruitment goals. One method that shows promise for improving recruitment is the use of interactive prompts that inform practitioners of patient eligibility for clinical trials during consultation. This paper presents the ePCRN-IDEA recruitment system, which utilises an agent-based infrastructure to enable real-time recruitment of patients. In essence, whenever patients enter a clinic, the system compares their details against eligibility criteria, which define the requirements of active clinical trials. If a patient is found to be eligible, a prompt is raised to notify the user. In this way, it becomes possible for recruitment to take place quickly in a cost effective manner, whilst maintaining patient trust through the involvement of their own health care practitioner.