An Approach for Detecting and Resolving Indirect Normative Conﬂicts in Multi-agent Systems J´ essica S. Santos 1,2(B ) , Mairon Belchior 1 , and Viviane T. Silva 2 1 Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niter´oi, RJ, Brazil {jsoares,mbelchior}@ic.uff.br,jessica.soares@ibm.com 2 IBM Research, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil vivianet@br.ibm.com Abstract. In Multi-agent systems (MAS), norms can be adopt as a strategy to regulate and guide the behavior of software agents and avoid that unexpected actions occur in the system. In order to guarantee that the MAS runs properly, the set of norms must be free of conﬂict. Two norms are in conﬂict when the agent automatically violates a norm when adopts the other one. In this paper, we present an approach for detecting and resolving indirect conﬂicts among norms that regulate a multi-agent system. Indirect conﬂicts are those who arise among norms whose ele- ments being regulated are not the same but are related. Our approach uses a lexical database and a domain ontology to detect indirect con- ﬂicts and the conﬂicts detected are resolved by manipulating the activa- tion/deactivation conditions of the conﬂicting norms taking into account the relationships identiﬁed among the elements of the conﬂicting norms. Keywords: Multi-agent systems · Norms · Conﬂict detection Conﬂict resolution · Ontology and WordNet 1 Introduction Multi-agent Systems (MAS) are systems composed of several software agents that cooperate in order to achieve their own goals and the goal of the whole system. Those software agents are entities endowed with autonomy that can be designed independently. In order to avoid that undesirable actions/states occur in MAS, norms specifying prohibitions, obligations and permissions can be applied in the system. In this context, MAS regulated by norms must ensure that their set of norms is free of conﬂict. We say that there is a normative conﬂict in the system, when an agent is not able to comply with a norm addressed to him without violate another one automatically. A normative conﬂict can be classiﬁed, as follows: (i) direct conﬂict: it is a conﬂict that involves two norms regulating the same elements and that have contradictory or opposite modalities, i.e., one norm prohibits the agent to perform an action while the other permits or obliges c  Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. van den Herik and A. P. Rocha (Eds.): ICAART 2018, LNAI 11352, pp. 23–45, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05453-3_2