A Reputation Agent Model for Reliable Vehicle-to-Vehicle Information

In the next future, an incredible amount of objectswill be mutually interconnected to exchange information and services to realize more and more complex tasks. Unfortunately, this process places significant risks on the interconnected objects and their users, due to the adoption of unreliable information sources. Consequently, an emerging issue is of improving thisaspect. In open and dynamic software agent contexts, this is a relevant question given the agents capability to quickly evaluate the potential effects of a greatest number of malicious behaviors in automated way. The adoption of authentication techniques is unable to assure the reliability of the information sources, differently from trust and reputation systems that fit well with such problems. The reliability of the information sources isbecoming relevant also in the context of urban mobility where vehicles could acquire information coming not only from the infrastructures but also from other vehicles. Reliable information sources are fundamental to contribute in reducing the negativetraffic effects in urban centers, which is among the most important factors affecting citizens’ life quality. In the above scenario, we designed a distributed reputation model, working within an agent framework, to assure the reliability of the informationsources in vehicle-to-vehicle interactions. In particular, the designed reputation model is able to detect malicious and cheating information sources as shown by some preliminary simulationscarried out on a simple urban test network.