The World Wide Web has emerged as the middleware of choice for most distributed systems. Recent standardization efforts for the Web of Things and Linked Data are now turning hypermedia into a homogenous information fabric that interconnects everything — physical objects, information resources, abstract concepts, and even holographic resources. The latest standards allow clients not only to browse, but also to observe and act on this hypermedia fabric. Researchers and practitioners are already looking for means to build more "intelligent" clients able to meet their design objectives through flexible autonomous use of this hypermedia fabric. Such autonomous agents have been studied to large extent in research on distributed artificial intelligence and, in particular, multi-agent systems (MAS). In this talk, we present our vision for integrating hypermedia systems and MAS, which we call Hypermedia MAS — a new class of MAS that are: (i) aligned with the Web architecture to inherit the properties of the Web as a world-wide, open, and long-lived system, and (ii) transparent and accountable to support acceptance by people. We believe Hypermedia MAS could break new ground in both Web and MAS research, and their potential applications would cut across society.

1. Rethinking Multi-Agent Systems for the World Wide Web
Andrei Ciortea
Interaction- and Communication-based Systems, University of St. Gallen
Wimmics, Inria, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, I3S
aDecentWeb | Jan 17, 2020

2. “(...) in fact documents on the web describe real objects
and imaginary concepts, and give particular relationships
between them. (...) This means that machines, as well as
operating on the web information, can do real things.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, WWW 1994
https://www.w3.org/Talks/WWW94Tim/

3. Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila. Scientific American, 2001
“The rest of the ideas in that article are now seeing widespread
deployment, but I ask again: where are all the agents?”
James Hendler, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2007
“Once dynamic and open systems become the norm,
they’ll need to adopt agent technologies as fundamental.”
Peter McBurney and Michael Luck,
IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2007

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Page 4
How can we design autonomous clients able to achieve their tasks by navigating the hypermedia
and deciding among the various options presented to them at run time?
- research on Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) already provides solutions to design, program,
debug, monitor, regulate, and coordinate such autonomous clients
Example: The W3C Web of Things
Ideally:
arrive-and-operate
Matthias Kovatsch et al. (eds.), Web of Things (WoT) Architecture, W3C Candidate Recommendation, 2019

5. AAMAS 2019

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Page 6 MAS – More Than Just Agents
What about the Web?
The Web as a transport layer in MAS
- WS-* standards (SOAP, WSDL, etc.)
- FIPA Agent Message Transport Protocol for HTTP
(http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00084/SC00084F.html)
MAS remain outside of the Web and are
misaligned with the Web architecture.

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Page 7 MAS – More Than Just Agents
Environment dimension [Weyns et al., 2007]
– workshop series: Environment for Multiagent
Systems (E4MAS)
Organization dimension [Boissier et al., 2006]
– workshop series: Coordination, Organizations,
Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems (COIN)
Environment
Dimension
External
Environment
Agent
Dimension
Organization
Dimension
JaCaMo meta-model [Boissier et al., 2013]
D. Weyns et al. Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems. Autonomous Agents Multi-Agent Systems 14, 5–30, 2007.
O. Boissier et al., eds. Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Multi-Agent Systems. Vol. 3913. Springer, 2006.

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Page 8 Rethinking Multi-Agent Systems for the Web
To define a new class of MAS designed for the Web that are:
• aligned with the Web architecture to inherit the properties of the Web as an Internet-scale, open,
and long-lived system;
• transparent and accountable to support acceptance by people.
Research Objective

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Page 9
May 13, San Francisco, CA
Andrei Ciortea, Simon Mayer, Fabien Gandon, Olivier Boissier
First Workshop on Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems
in conjunction with
@hyperagents Weaving a Web for People and Artificial Agentshttp://hyperagents.org/

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Page 10 Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems
Distributed hypermedia environment
PUT [lightbulb_IRI]
[intended state]
200 Ok
Socio-technical systems composed of people and autonomous agents situated and interacting in a
shared hypermedia environment that is distributed across the open Web.
– agents navigate and use the distributed hypermedia environment in pursuit of their goals
Ciortea et al: A Decade in Hindsight: The Missing Bridge Between Multi-Agent Systems and the World Wide Web, AAMAS 2019

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Page 11 Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems
Affordances:
Turn On / Off
Change color
Org. Spec.
Init.
propose
reject
Part.
Interaction
Prot. Spec.
Policies
Distributed hypermedia environment
Ciortea et al.: Engineering World-Wide Multi-Agent Systems with Hypermedia, EMAS 2018
Socio-technical systems composed of people and autonomous agents situated and interacting in a
shared hypermedia environment that is distributed across the open Web.
– agents navigate and use the distributed hypermedia environment in pursuit of their goals
– core idea: the environment uses hypermedia to drive interaction in the MAS

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Architectural style for Hypermedia MAS
Interaction as a first-class abstraction on the Web
Regulation as a first-class abstraction on the Web
Research Challenges
Simon Andrei Danai

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Page 13
Simon Mayer (University of St. Gallen)
Olivier Boissier, Antoine Zimmermann (MINES Saint-Étienne)
Fabien Gandon (Inria, Université Côte d‘Azur, CNRS, I3S)
Alessandro Ricci (University of Bologna)
Literature
A. Ciortea, S. Mayer, F. Gandon, O. Boissier, A. Ricci, A. Zimmermann: A Decade in
Hindsight: The Missing Bridge Between Multi-Agent Systems and the World
Wide Web, AAMAS 2019
A. Ciortea, O. Boissier, A. Ricci: Engineering World-Wide Multi-Agent Systems
with Hypermedia, EMAS 2018
A. Ciortea, S. Mayer, F. Michahelles: Repurposing Manufacturing Lines On-the-fly
with MAS for the WoT, AAMAS 2018
A. Ciortea, S. Mayer, F. Gandon, O. Boissier, A. Ricci, A. Zimmermann: Exploiting
Interaction Affordances: On Engineering Autonomous Systems for the Web of
Things, Second W3C WoT Workshop, 2019
Credits
Thank you!
andrei.ciortea@unisg.ch
http://andreiciortea.ro
@andreiciortea

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Page 14
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