Towards commitments for situated agents

Traditional architectures for situated, behavior-based agents take the viewpoint of the individual agent to select the most appropriate action. Action selection is typically based on internal stimuli and stimuli from the agent's neighboring environment. As such collaborations between agents have to emerge from the individually selected actions of the agents. In this paper we study the research problem of how to enable explicit collaborations between situated agents. Explicit collaborations are reflected in mutual commitments. Contrary to the traditional approaches of commitment that are based on the mutually dependent menial states of the involved agents and a goal-oriented plan, we introduce the notion of a situated commitment that is based on the roles of the involved agents and the local context they are placed in. Activating mutual situated commitments in a collaboration results in more consistent behavior of the agents towards their commitments. The proposed approach fits the general principles of situatedness and robustness of situated multi-agent systems.