AgentDevLaw: A Middleware Architecture for Integrating Legal Ontologies and Multi-agent Systems

Abstract

In social simulation, agents play different roles with different behaviors. Each has its goals and can cooperate or not with others and consume resources. Sometimes it is necessary to regulate these agents with mechanisms like norms that explain action limitations and how the society works for the agents. To explain how the world works for the agents, in different domains, ontologies have been used to provide human knowledge. In this sense, a more special kind of ontology is built with the legal information of a society: legal ontologies. These legal ontologies operate with concepts and data collected from human society and this can be provided to the agents. With this type of information, the agents can be assisted in monitoring and evaluating actions, comparing their beliefs with existing laws. Platforms into programming multi-agent systems provide an environment to develop the social simulations, but not always provided a connection with ontologies resources. This study proposes the AgentDevLaw middleware that integrates platforms of agents’ simulation with an existent legal ontology. The application of the software component is exemplified and tested with simulation scenarios in two agent’s environments: JaCaMo and JADE.