Situated normative infrastructures: the normative object approach

Norms have been considered an attractive means for the regulation of the dynamics of multi systems (MAS). Typically, it is left for the individual agents to apply (general) norms to the particular concrete situations that arise during the operation of the system. This paper summarises our work on situated normative infrastructures for multi-agent systems, which aim to facilitate the operationalisation of general norms for their use by autonomous agents in particular concrete situations. The paper: 1) clarifies the concepts of normative object, normative space, and situated normative infrastructure; 2) explains the implications of such concepts for the normative reasoning of autonomous agents; and 3) illustrates the ways in which a situated normative infrastructure may define alternative normative systems for a given normative multi-agent system.