{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:37:45Z","timestamp":1760240265182,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":42,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,16]],"date-time":"2019-04-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1555372800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Algorithms"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Multiagent systems can be seen as an approach to software engineering for the design and development of complex, distributed software. Generally speaking, multiagent systems provide two main abstractions for modularizing the software: the agents and the environment where agents operate. In this paper, we argue that also the social relationships among the agents should be expressed explicitly and become first-class objects both at design- and at development-time. In particular, we propose to represent social relationships as commitments that are reified as resources in the agents\u2019 environment and can be directly manipulated by the agents via standard operations. We demonstrate that this view induces an agent programming schema that is substantially independent of the actual agent platform, provided that commitments are available as explained. The paper exemplifies the schema on two agent platforms, JADE and JaCaMo, where commitments are made available via the 2COMM library.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/a12040076","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,17]],"date-time":"2019-04-17T03:02:01Z","timestamp":1555470121000},"page":"76","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Programming Agents by Their Social Relationships: A Commitment-Based Approach"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9294-0408","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matteo","family":"Baldoni","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Torino, Torino 10149, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2070-0616","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cristina","family":"Baroglio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Torino, Torino 10149, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9336-0651","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Roberto","family":"Micalizio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Torino, Torino 10149, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9861-390X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Stefano","family":"Tedeschi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Torino, Torino 10149, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"33","article-title":"A Survey of Programming Languages and Platforms for Multi-Agent Systems","volume":"30","author":"Bordini","year":"2006","journal-title":"Informatica (Slovenia)"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"125","DOI":"10.1007\/0-387-26350-0_5","article-title":"JADE\u2014A Java Agent Development Framework","volume":"Volume 15","author":"Bellifemine","year":"2005","journal-title":"Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Platforms and Applications"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Omicini, A., and Zambonelli, F. 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