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Reasoning about Visibility, Perception, and Knowledge

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Intelligent Agents VI. Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1757))

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Abstract

Although many formalisms have been proposed for reasoning about intelligent agents, few of these have been semantically grounded in a concrete computational model. This paper presents \(\cal VSK\) logic, a formalism for reasoning about multi-agent systems, in which the semantics are grounded in an general, finite state machine-like model of agency. \(\cal VSK\) logic allows us to represent: what is objectively true of the environment; what is visible, or knowable about the environment; what the agent perceives of the environment; and finally, what the agent actually knows about the environment. \(\mathcal{VSK}\) logic is an extension of modal epistemic logic. The possible relationships between what is true, visible, perceived, and known are discussed and characterised in terms of the architectural properties of agents that they represent. Some conclusions and issues are then discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom

    Michael Wooldridge & Alessio Lomuscio

Authors
  1. Michael Wooldridge
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  2. Alessio Lomuscio
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK

    Nicholas R. Jennings

  2. Department of Computer Science, York University , M3J 1P3, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Yves Lespérance

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Wooldridge, M., Lomuscio, A. (2000). Reasoning about Visibility, Perception, and Knowledge. In: Jennings, N.R., Lespérance, Y. (eds) Intelligent Agents VI. Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. ATAL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1757. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10719619_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/10719619_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67200-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46467-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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