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Summary: Scheduling Non-Enforceable Contracts Among Autonomous Agents
Thomas Tesch Karl Aberer
GMD-IPSI Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute
German National Research Center for Information Technology
Dolivostraße 15, D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany
ftesch,abererg@darmstadt.gmd.de
Abstract
With the emergence of fast and standardized communica-
tion infrastructures over which separately designed agents
of different organizations can interact in real-time, there
is an increasing demand for cooperation mechanisms that
allow to carry out inter-organizational cooperations in a
safe way. The lack of external control over an agent's de-
cisions, resources and actions hamper the usage of tradi-
tional transaction and workflow technology to make self-
interested agents cooperate, i.e., agents cannot not be
forced from a mediating cooperation instance to continue
a cooperation. The challenge is, therefore, to design a co-
operation mechanism that motivates cooperating agents to
carry out a specified contract and, in case of unilateral
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