Devicesarguing

Devicesarguing is a term used to describe the automated interaction between networked devices or software agents that have overlapping or conflicting goals, leading to negotiation or argumentation to determine a course of action. It is a descriptive concept used in discussions of interoperability and autonomous decision-making in complex systems.

In practice, devicesarguing arises in distributed or intelligent environments such as smart homes, industrial IoT, or multi-robot systems, where components share resources or timing constraints. Interactions can be explicit, via negotiated protocols and message exchanges, or implicit, via priority rules, timeouts, or fallback behaviors. Examples include a thermostat and window-control system negotiating comfort versus energy savings, or a lighting controller and occupancy sensor coordinating to avoid redundant actions.

Mechanisms used to support devicesarguing include contract-based negotiation, voting, auctions, and abstract argumentation frameworks. These mechanisms aim to resolve conflicts, prevent deadlock, and allocate scarce resources fairly. However, they can introduce latency, complexity, or unpredictable behavior if not carefully designed or supervised by higher-level policies.

Challenges and considerations include security and privacy of inter-device communication, robustness to faults, and the need for clear user expectations. Interoperability and adherence to evolving standards are important, as is providing transparent logs to help diagnose oscillations or repeated renegotiations. The term is not part of formal standards and remains mainly in descriptive discourse about how automated systems resolve conflicting objectives.

See also: multi-agent systems, distributed systems, smart homes, conflict resolution, resource allocation.