Hypermedia MAS Core Ontology

An entity that is capable of autonomous behavior.

A resource that can be dynamically constructed, shared, and used by agents to support their activities. In a Hypermedia MAS, an artifact exposes and can be accessed through a hypermedia interface (in addition to other possible interfaces, such as a physical interface).

A Hypermedia MAS (HMAS) platform is a system providing a collection of features to support Hypermedia MAS. Common features include support for communication and interaction, runtime environments for agents, artifacts, or organizations, etc.

Examples of hmas:HypermediaMASPlatform include Twitter, Facebook, a JADE node/delpoyment, or a JaCaMo node/delpoyment — all of which provide features that could support Hypermedia MAS & hybrid communities.

Structured data describing a resource through general metadata, domain- and application-specific metadata, and signifiers.

e.g., a Thing Description document, a Hydra document, an Socio-Technical Network platform description, an agent description based on the FIPA standard

• isProfileOf ^op
• exposesSignifier ^op

• hasProfile ^op
• isExposedIn ^op

A perceivable sign/cue that can be interpreted meaningfully by an agent to reveal information about a behavior possibility.

:Signifier works as a bridge between the Core and the Interaction Vocabularies.

A logical container for any resource in general and in particular for agents, artifacts or other workspaces. Workspaces can be created or deleted by agents on a needed basis. All agent interactions happen in the context of a workspace whether or not the worspace was explicitly reified. A workspace can be, for instance, implemented on top of an LDP (Linked Data Platform) indirect container.

An Organization is an entity situated on Agents and Artifacts, and regulated by a regulation system.

• isMemberOf ^op
• isMaterialOf ^op

Links all the resources that are logically contained in a workspaces, directly or indirectly by transitivity.

A relation that refers to all workspaces in which a resource is contained.

A relation that refers to a direct logical containment relation and is related to the definition of a workspace as a logical container.

A relation that describes a workspace that contains a resource.

A relation that links a resource profile to the resource it is a profile of.

A relation that links a resource to its profile.

A relation that refers to an information resource or a process that is hosted on a platform. A hosting relation might have further implications, e.g. the usage of the hosted resource (or the usage of platform resources by the hosted resource) could be subject to terms of service or data licensing policies specific to the hosting platform.

A relation that refers to the platform that hosts the information resource or process.

A relation between a signifier and a resource profile it is exposed in.

A relation between a resource profile and a signifier it exposes.

A relation between an Agent and an Organization it belongs to.

A relation between an Artifact and an Organization it belongs to.

A behavior possibility that is a relationship between an ability of an agent and a situation that includes agents and features of the environment.

affordance

A behavior possibility that is a relationship between an ability of an agent and a situation that includes agents and features of the environment.

The definition of the concept follows affordance theorists [Chemero and Turvey, 2007].

The concept has been considered as a candidate term for representing interaction cues and metadata in the Hypermedia MAS Core Ontology. The term :Signifier is selected instead for the following reasons: 1) Affordances emerge upon the presence of individual agents in the appropriate situation, while signifiers are defined with respect to agent types to preserve the evolvability and reusability of interaction cues without requiring prior knowledge about individual agents; 2) Affordances are defined in [Chemero and Turvey, 2007] for studying interactions of animals, while signifiers are defined here for supporting interactions of autonomous agents, which exhibit more heterogeneous abilities than animals — including agents whose cognitive abilities exclusively rely on computational processes such as reasoning over representations. Here, the concept is provided to support the discussion, management, and modelling of signifiers, which reveal information about affordances [Norman, 2013]. For example, the association between the two terms enables examining the dynamic exposure of signifiers based on the run-time availability of agent abilities and situations, or the modelling of signifiers that reveal information about affordances for both artificial and human agents.

• [Chemero and Turvey, 2007] Chemero, A., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Complexity, hypersets, and the ecological perspective on perception-action. Biological Theory, 2(1), 23-36. https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2007.2.1.23
• [Norman, 2013] Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic books. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262640374/