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Paper details
Number 3 - September 2015
Volume 25 - 2015
A situation-based multi-agent architecture for handling misunderstandings in interactions
Thao Phuong Pham, Mourad Rabah, Pascal Estraillier
Abstract
During interactions, system actors may face up misunderstandings when their local states contain inconsistent data about the
same fact. Misunderstandings in interactions are likely to reduce interactivity performances (deviation or deadlock) or even
affect overall system behavior. In this paper, we characterize misunderstandings in interactions between system actors (that
may be human users or system agents) in interactive adaptive systems. To deal with such misunderstandings and ensure
state consistency, we present an agent-based architecture and a scenario structuring approach. The system includes several
agents devoted to scenario unfolding, plot adaptation and consistency management. Scenario structuring is based on the
notion of a situation that is an elementary building block dividing the interactions between systems’ actors into contextual scenes. This pattern supports not only scenario execution but consistency management as well. In order to organize and control interactions, the situation contextualizes interactions and activity of the system’s actors. It also includes prevention and tolerance agent-based mechanisms to deal with the misunderstandings and their causes. We validate our consistency management mechanisms using Uppaal simulation and provide some experimental results to show the effectiveness of our approach on an online distance learning case study.
Keywords
interactive adaptive systems, misunderstandings in interactions, situation structuring, consistency management