Interleaving multi-agent systems and social networks for organized adaptation

Ad hoc networks can be formed from arbitrary collections of sensors, mobile routers, or business processes. These networks are open systems, in the sense that the network nodes share a common language but do not necessarily share a common goal or common knowledge, and there is no centralised controller or global data repository. Such systems have numerous advantages in terms of enabling autonomous, heterogeneous components to achieve individual goals without central direction and with only partial knowledge. However, operational problems stem from potential conflicts over resource allocation, miscommunication, and sub-ideal operation, and the general need of embedded systems to change behaviour according to changes in the environment. To address these problems, we propose to converge aspects of norm-governed specification from distributed multi-agent systems, opinion formation from social networks, and voting procedures from computational social choice. In particular, we develop a prototype system which interleaves gossiping, expressed preferences (voting) and norms, to configure rules and assign roles. This is another demonstration of the use of socially-inspired mechanisms for regulation of decentralised systems and a key step towards the realization of organized adaptation for open multi-agent systems.