Agent planning, negotiation and control of operation

Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, 2011

Multi agent systems have been invented 20 years ago and the theory has matured in the last two decades. Logic has and still is playing a prominent part in the basic foundations of agency and also in the development of agent programming languages, the specification and verification of agent systems. This paper is a (subjective) overview of the points of contact of logic and agents as the authors perceived it over the years.

Formal Approaches to Agent-Based …, 2002

In this paper we address the task of organising multi-agent systems in order to collectively solve problems. We base our approach on a logical model of rational agency comprising a few simple, but powerful, concepts. While many other researchers have tackled this problem using formal logic, the important aspect of the work described here is that the logical descriptions of the agents are directly executable using the Concurrent MetateM framework, allowing the execution of agents described in a combination of temporal, belief and ability logics. Here, we are particularly concerned with exploring some of the possible logical constraints that may be imposed upon these agents, and how these constraints affect the ability of the agents to come together to collectively solve problems.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

The notion of agents has provided a way of imbuing traditional computing systems with an extra degree of flexibility that allows them to be more resilient and robust in the face of more varied and unpredictable forms of interaction. One class of agents, typically called intelligent agents, represent their world symbolically according to their beliefs, have goals which need to be achieved, and adopt plans or intentions to achieve them. Now, one approach to building agents is to design a programming language whose semantics are based on some theory of rational or intentional agency and to program the desired behaviour of individual agents directly using mental attitudes. Such a technique is referred to as agent oriented programming. Arguably, the most innovative of these languages is 3APL (pronounced "triple-a-p-l") which supports the construction of intelligent agents for the development of complex systems through a set of intuitive concepts like beliefs, goals and plans. In this paper, we provide a Z specification of the programming language 3APL which provides a basis for implementation and also adds to a growing library of agent techniques and features.

2003

Logic in Databases, 1996

In this paper we analyse the di erences between rational and reactive agent architectures, and propose a uniform agent architecture that aims to capture both as special cases. For this purpose we employ a proof procedure, to control the agent's behaviour, which combines de nitions with integrity constraints. The proof procedure is general, and has been shown elsewhere to unify abductive logic programming, constraint logic programming and semantic query optimisation. We also employ a resource-bounded formalisation of the proof procedure which allows the agent's reasoning to be interrupted and resumed, so that observations and actions can be performed.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1998

2004

The workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (DALT), in its sixth edition this year, is a well-established forum for researchers interested in sharing their experiences in combining declarative and formal approaches with aspects of engineering and technology of agents and multiagent systems.

Proceedings First IEEE International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods

Previous work has addressed the development of a framework to categorise and understand agent-based systems. It described and formalised an agent-hierarchy that included objects, agents and autonomous agents, each with different levels of functionality, and provided a precise vocabulary with which to discuss agent systems. This paper reviews a large variety of further work that has built on that foundation in several ways. First, the framework itself has been refined to detail important aspects of agent functionality such as goal generation and adoption. Second, the structures and relationships between agents have been specified and analysed allowing a more complete understanding of the dynamics of agent systems. Third, existing systems and theories have been formalised within the framework so that they may be evaluated and compared in a coherent and consistent way. Finally, some steps have been taken in attempting to construct a methodology for the development of agent-based systems. Though this work spans a large range of concerns, it is based on a single set of basic concepts providing fundamental structure.