Verifying Conflicts Between Multiple Norms in Multi-Agent Systems

In open multi-agent systems norms describe the behavior that can be performed, that must be performed, and that cannot be performed. One of the main challenges on developing normative systems is that norms may conflict with each other. Norms are in conflict when the fulfillment of one norm violates the other and vice-versa. Although there are many approaches to check for conflicts among norms, such approaches only analyze the norms in pairs. However, there are conflicts that can only be detected when the conflict checker analyzes multiple norms together. In this work, we present an algorithm able to check for conflicts between multiple norms that overcomes the complexity of considering multiple norms by using filters that subdivide the norms into small groups. The conflict checker executes over the norms of each group what reduces the time for executing the algorithm.