Title: Bilateral semantic negotiation: a decentralised approach to ontology enrichment in open multi-agent systems

Authors: Pasquale De Meo; Giovanni Quattrone; Domenico Rosaci; Domenico Ursino

Addresses: Dipartimento di Fisica, Sezione di Informatica, Università di Messina, Viale F. Stagno D'Alcontres, 31, 98166 Messina, Italy. ' DIMET, Università 'Mediterranea' di Reggio Calabria, Via Graziella, Località Feo di Vito, 89122 Reggio Calabria, Italy. ' DIMET, Università 'Mediterranea' di Reggio Calabria, Via Graziella, Località Feo di Vito, 89122 Reggio Calabria, Italy. ' DIMET, Università 'Mediterranea' di Reggio Calabria, Via Graziella, Località Feo di Vito, 89122 Reggio Calabria, Italy

Abstract: A key problem in multi-agent systems is represented by communication difficulties among agents having different ontologies. Since, in many cases, the presence of a unique, common ontology does not seem a suitable solution, some approaches have been proposed in the past to provide each user with his own personal ontology. These approaches face possible communication problems by means of a multilateral semantic negotiation. Although effective, this solution reduces its efficiency drastically when the agent community becomes large. This paper proposes a new solution, based on bilateral semantic negotiation, to support agent communication and the consequent ontology enrichment. This solution maintains the effectiveness of multilateral semantic negotiation and, at the same time, reduces the required costs.

Keywords: multi-agent systems; MAS; bilateral semantic negotiation; agent ontology enrichment; agent-based systems; agent communication.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDMMM.2012.045134

International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management, 2012 Vol.4 No.1, pp.1 - 38

Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article