Heterogeneous Active Agents, I: Semantics

Abstract Over the years, many different agent programming languages have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a concept called Agent Programs using which, the way an agent should act in various situations can be declaratively specified by the creator of that agent. Agent Programs may be built on top of arbitrary pieces of software code and may be used to specify what an agent is obliged to do, what an agent may do, and what an agent may not do. In this paper, we define several successively more sophisticated and epistemically satisfying declarative semantics for agent programs. We further show that agent programs cleanly extend well understood semantics for logic programs, and thus are clearly linked to existing results on logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning.

[1]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Formal Semantics for an Abstract Agent Programming Language , 1997, ATAL.

[2]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Coalition Formation among Bounded Rational Agents , 1995, IJCAI.

[3]  V. S. Subrahmanian.  Amalgamating knowledge bases , 1994, TODS.

[4]  John-Jules Ch. Meyer,et al.  A Logic of Capabilities , 1994, LFCS.

[5]  Les Gasser,et al.  A Dynamic Organizational Architecture for Adaptive Problem Solving , 1991, AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

[6]  Georg Gottlob,et al.  Complexity Results for Nonmonotonic Logics , 1992, J. Log. Comput..

[7]  Frank Dignum,et al.  Intentional Agents and Goal Formation , 1997, ATAL.

[8]  Jürgen Dix,et al.  Meta-agent programs , 2000, J. Log. Program..

[9]  Robert B. Ross,et al.  IMPACT: the interactive Maryland platform for agents collaborating together , 1998, Proceedings International Conference on Multi Agent Systems (Cat. No.98EX160).

[10]  Joseph R. Shoenfield,et al.  Mathematical logic , 1967 .

[11]  Victor W. Marek,et al.  The Relationship Between Stable, Supported, Default and Autoepistemic Semantics for General Logic Programs , 1992, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[12]  Guido Moerkotte,et al.  Function Materialization in Object Bases: Design, Realization, and Evaluation , 1994, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[13]  Michael R. Genesereth,et al.  Software agents , 1994, CACM.

[14]  Laura Giordano,et al.  A Modal Programming Language for Representing Complex Actions , 1998 .

[15]  Ronald V. Book,et al.  Review: Michael R. Garey and David S. Johnson, Computers and intractability: A guide to the theory of $NP$-completeness , 1980 .

[16]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  A Formal Specification of dMARS , 1997, ATAL.

[17]  J. Lloyd.  Foundations of Logic Programming , 1984, Symbolic Computation.

[18]  David Jordan,et al.  The Object Database Standard: ODMG 2.0 , 1997 .

[19]  Richard S. Varga,et al.  Proof of Theorem 5 , 1983 .

[20]  Matthias Klusch,et al.  Interoperability among Heterogeneous Software Agents on the Internet , 1998 .

[21]  Oren Etzioni,et al.  A softbot-based interface to the Internet , 1994, CACM.

[22]  L. Thorne McCarty,et al.  Modalities Over Actions, I. Model Theory , 1994, KR.

[23]  Rina Azoulay-Schwartz,et al.  Bidding Mechanisms for Data Allocation in Multi-Agent Environments , 1997, ATAL.

[24]  Floyd Wilder,et al.  A Guide to the Tcp/Ip Protocol Suite , 1931 .

[25]  Vipul Kashyap,et al.  InfoSleuth: agent-based semantic integration of information in open and dynamic environments , 1997, SIGMOD '97.

[26]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice , 1995, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[27]  Anil Nerode,et al.  Hybrid Knowledge Bases , 1996, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[28]  Hector J. Levesque,et al.  Intention is Choice with Commitment , 1990, Artif. Intell..

[29]  Hector J. Levesque,et al.  Reasoning about Concurrent Execution Prioritized Interrupts, and Exogenous Actions in the Situation Calculus , 1997, IJCAI.

[30]  E. Allen Emerson,et al.  Temporal and Modal Logic , 1991, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume B: Formal Models and Sematics.

[31]  Chitta Baral,et al.  Representing Concurrent Actions in Extended Logic Programming , 1993, IJCAI.

[32]  Frank Dignum,et al.  Implementation of a Cooperative Agent Architecture Based on the Language-Action Perspective , 1997, ATAL.

[33]  Roel Wieringa,et al.  Deontic logic in computer science: normative system specification , 1994 .

[34]  Ronald M. Lee,et al.  Defeasible deontic reasoning: a logic programming model , 1994 .

[35]  Narain H. Gehani,et al.  OdeFS: A File System Interface to an Object-Oriented Database , 1994, VLDB.

[36]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Agents that reduce work and information overload , 1994, CACM.

[37]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice The Knowledge Engineering Review , 1995 .

[38]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Controlling Cooperative Problem Solving in Industrial Multi-Agent Systems Using Joint Intentions , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[39]  Guido Moerkotte,et al.  Efficient maintenance of materialized mediated views , 1995, SIGMOD '95.

[40]  Jorge Lobo,et al.  Relating Minimal Models and Pre-Requisite-Free Normal Defaults , 1992, Inf. Process. Lett..

[41]  Ron van der Meyden.  A Clausal Logic for Deontic Action Specification , 1991, ISLP.

[42]  Christel Baier,et al.  Symbolic Model Checking for Probabilistic Processes , 1997, ICALP.

[43]  Yannis Papakonstantinou,et al.  Expressive Capabilities Description Languages and Query Rewriting Algorithms , 2000, J. Log. Program..

[44]  Jennifer Widom,et al.  The TSIMMIS Project: Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources , 1994, IPSJ.

[45]  Chitta Baral,et al.  Logic Programming and Knowledge Representation , 1994, J. Log. Program..

[46]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  Multi-Agent Integration of Information Gathering and Decision Support , 1996, ECAI.

[47]  Jorge Lobo,et al.  Formal Characterization of Active Databases , 1996, Logic in Databases.

[48]  Jeffrey D. Uuman.  Principles of database and knowledge- base systems , 1989 .

[49]  Michael N. Huhns,et al.  A Multi-Agent Environment for Department of Defense Distribution , 1995, Adaption and Learning in Multi-Agent Systems.

[50]  Victor W. Marek,et al.  Nonmonotonic logic - context-dependent reasoning , 1997, Artificial intelligence.

[51]  Anil Nerode,et al.  Mixed integer programming methods for computing nonmonotonic deductive databases , 1994, JACM.

[52]  R. G. G. Cattell,et al.  The Object Database Standard: ODMG-93 , 1993 .

[53]  Michael Gelfond,et al.  Representing Action and Change by Logic Programs , 1993, J. Log. Program..

[54]  Timothy W. Finin,et al.  Semantics for an Agent Communication Language , 1997, ATAL.

[55]  Afsaneh Haddadi.  Towards a Pragmatic Theory of Interactions , 1995, ICMAS.

[56]  Umeshwar Dayal,et al.  View Definition and Generalization for Database Integration in a Multidatabase System , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[57]  Munindar P. Singh.  A Customizable Coordination Service for Autonomous Agents , 1997, ATAL.

[58]  Craig A. Knoblock,et al.  Retrieving and Integrating Data from Multiple Information Sources , 1993, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[59]  L. Thorne McCarty,et al.  Permissions and Obligations , 1983, IJCAI.

[60]  Marcel Schoppers,et al.  Designing Embedded Agents to Optimize End-User Objectives , 1997, ATAL.

[61]  David S. Johnson,et al.  Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness , 1978 .

[62]  Leslie Pack Kaelbling,et al.  A Situated View of Representation and Control , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[63]  Jeffrey S. Rosenschein,et al.  Rules of Encounter - Designing Conventions for Automated Negotiation among Computers , 1994 .

[64]  Edmund H. Durfee,et al.  The Distributed Agent Architecture of the University of Michigan Digital Library , 1995 .

[65]  Anil Nerode,et al.  Implementing deductive databases by mixed integer programming , 1996, TODS.

[66]  V. S. Subrahmanian,et al.  Foundations of multimedia database systems , 1996, JACM.

[67]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  Middle-Agents for the Internet , 1997, IJCAI.

[68]  L. Thorne McCarty,et al.  Reflections on "Taxman": An Experiment in Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning , 1977 .

[69]  L. Thorne McCarty,et al.  Reasoning About Indefinite Actions , 1992, KR.

[70]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Formalizing the Cooperative Problem Solving Process , 1994 .

[71]  Carl A. Gunter,et al.  In handbook of theoretical computer science , 1990 .

[72]  Munindar P. Singh,et al.  Readings in agents , 1997 .

[73]  Sven Ove Hansson,et al.  Review of Deontic Logic in Computer Science: Normative System Specification, John-Jules Ch. Meyer and Roel J. Wieringa (eds.), John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 1993 , 1994, Bull. IGPL.

[74]  Chitta Baral,et al.  Representing Actions: Laws, Observations and Hypotheses , 1997, J. Log. Program..

[75]  Nils J. Nilsson,et al.  Principles of Artificial Intelligence , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[76]  Yoav Shoham,et al.  Agent-Oriented Programming , 1992, Artif. Intell..

[77]  David J. Israel,et al.  Plans and resource‐bounded practical reasoning , 1988, Comput. Intell..

[78]  P. J. Fitzgerald,et al.  Law and Logic , 1964 .

[79]  Gio Wiederhold,et al.  Intelligent integration of information , 1993, SIGMOD Conference.

[80]  Laura Giordano,et al.  An Abductive Proof Procedure for Reasoning About Actions in Modal Logic Programming , 1996, NMELP.

[81]  Peter Norvig,et al.  Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach , 1995 .

[82]  V. S. Subrahmanian,et al.  Heterogeneous Multimedia Reasoning , 1995, Computer.

[83]  Timothy W. Finin,et al.  A semantics approach for KQML—a general purpose communication language for software agents , 1994, CIKM '94.

[84]  Somesh Jha,et al.  Multi-Agent Coordination through Coalition Formation , 1997, ATAL.

[85]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Negotiation and Cooperation in Multi-Agent Environments , 1997, Artif. Intell..

[86]  Michael P. Wellman.  A Market-Oriented Programming Environment and its Application to Distributed Multicommodity Flow Problems , 1993, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[87]  Raymond Reiter,et al.  A Logic for Default Reasoning , 1987, Artif. Intell..

[88]  Anand S. Rao,et al.  Modeling Rational Agents within a BDI-Architecture , 1997, KR.

[89]  Robert C. Moore.  Semantical Considerations on Nonmonotonic Logic , 1985, IJCAI.

[90]  Randall Davis,et al.  Negotiation as a Metaphor for Distributed Problem Solving , 1988, Artif. Intell..

[91]  Michael R. Genesereth,et al.  Logical foundations of artificial intelligence , 1987 .