Commitments and conventions: The foundation of coordination in multi-agent systems

TLDR

Distributed Artificial Intelligence systems, where multiple agents interact to improve individual and system utility, are increasingly pervasive, and researchers now seek underlying theories guiding coordination and cooperation. The authors model agent communities with a distributed goal search formalism, arguing that commitments and conventions form the foundation of coordination in multi‑agent systems. They analyze existing coordination models that use commitment‑like concepts and propose a new unifying framework. They reformulate several prominent coordination techniques that lack explicit commitments or conventions to demonstrate their compliance with the proposed hypothesis.

Abstract

Abstract Distributed Artificial Intelligence systems, in which multiple agents interact to improve their individual performance and to enhance the systems' overall utility, are becoming an increasingly pervasive means of conceptualising a diverse range of applications. As the discipline matures, researchers are beginning to strive for the underlying theories and principles which guide the central processes of coordination and cooperation. Here agent communities are modelled using a distributed goal search formalism, and it is argued that commitments (pledges to undertake a specific course of action) and conventions (means of monitoring commitments in changing circumstances) are the foundation of coordination in multi-agent systems. An analysis of existing coordination models which use concepts akin to commitments and conventions is undertaken before a new unifying framework is presented. Finally, a number of prominent coordination techniques which do not explicitly involve commitments or conventions are reformulated in these terms to demonstrate their compliance with the central hypothesis of this paper.