AGENTS: object-oriented prolog system for cooperating knowledge-based systems

Abstract Engineering domains such as manufacturing design are complicated, while expert systems are dedicated to the solution of problems within narrow domains. The range of problem solving can be extended by cooperating knowledge-based systems, each of which may be confined to a narrow and specialized domain. A tandem architecture is proposed where a knowledge source is composed of two parts: agent and system. A system is developed in a private proof language mainly for computation. On the other hand, an agent is a representative of a system developed in a common argument language mainly for cooperation. This meets requirements of modularity and commonality. The paper presents a tool called AGENTS, which is an object-oriented Prolog system for this purpose. The AGENTS system combines constructs from both object-oriented and deductive systems with Prolog-like syntax and semantics. It proves its logical simplicity for fast prototyping.

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