Applying Ontology Modularization to Argumentation over Ontology Correspondences in MAS

Efficient agent communication in open and dynamic environments relies on the agents ability to reach a mutual understanding over message exchanges. Such environments are characterized by the existence of different agents, which may commit to different ontologies, with no prior assumptions regarding the use of shared vocabularies. Various approaches have therefore considered how mutually acceptable mappings may be determined dynamically between agents through negotiation. However, this process can be highly complex, reaching ?(p)2 -complete. Whilst it is non-trivial to reduce this complexity, we have explored the use of ontology modularization as a means of reducing the space of possible concepts over which the agents have to negotiate. In this paper, we propose an approach that combines modularization with argumentation to generate focused domains of discourse to facilitate communication. We empirically demonstrate that we can not only reduce the number of alignments required to reach consensus by an average of 75%, but that in 41% of cases, we can identify those agents that would not be able to fully satisfy the request, without the need for negotiation