Abstract
In the distributed multiagent systems discussed in this thesis, heterogeneous autonomous agents interoperate in order to achieve their goals. In such environments, agents can be embedded in diverse contexts and interact with agents of various types and behaviours. Mechanisms are needed for coordinating these multiagent interactions, and so far they have included tools for the support of conversation protocols and tools for the establishment and management of agent groups and electronic institutions. In this thesis, we describe our institutional environment approach, which includes the use of commitments and normative spaces. It is based on a metaphor in which agents may join an open system at any time, but they must obey regulations in order to maintain a suitable reputation that reflects its degree of cooperation with other agents in the group, and make them a more desired partner for others in a distributed organizational environment.
Coloured Petri Nets are used to formalize a workflow in the institutional environment defining a normative space that guides the agents during interactions in the conversation space. Model Checking is used to determine the change of states of the Commitment Objects that represent the Norms in the environment and Count-as Rules are used to separate lower level concerns of the System Agents to higher level concerns more related with the application domain where the system is built.