Abstract
This paper presents the notion of an agent interaction model, from which error conditions for agent communication can be defined— cases in which an agent generates a not-understood message. Such a model specifies task and agent interdependencies, agent roles, and predicate properties at a domain-independent level of abstraction. It also defines which agent beliefs may be updated, revised, or accessed through a communication act from another agent in a particular role. An agent generates a not-understood message when it fails to explain elements of a received message in terms of this underlying interaction model. The reason included as content for the not-understood message is the specific model violation. As such, not-understood messages constitute a kind of ‘run-time error’ that signals mismatches between agents’ respective belief states, in terms of the general interaction model that defines legal and pragmatic communication actions. The interaction model can also set policies for belief revision as a response to a not-understood message, which may be necessary when task allocation or coordination relationships change during run time.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Austin, J.: How to do Things with Words. Harvard University Press (1962)
Bond, A. H.: Commitment: Some DAI Insights from Symbolic Interactionist Society. In: Proceedings of 9th Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence. 1989)
Breiter, P., Sadek, M.: A Rational Agent as the Kernal of a Cooperative Spoken Dialogue System. In: Intelligent Agents III (LNAI Vol. 1193). Springer-Verlag (1997) 189–204
Cohen, P., Pernault, R.: Elements of a Plan-Based Theory of Speech Acts. Cognitive Science 3 (1979) 177–212
DAML Agent Markup Language, http://www.daml.org
Decker, K., Lesser, V.: Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms. In: Proc. 5th Intl. Conference on Multi-agent Systems. MIT Press (1995) 73–80
Decker, K., Lesser, V.: Quantitative modeling of complex computational task environments. In: Proc. of AAAI-93._AAAI Press (1993) 217–224
Elio, R., Haddadi, A.: On abstract models and conversation protocols. In F. Dignum and M. Greaves (eds.): Issues in Agent Communication. (LNAI 1916). Springer-Verlag (2000) 301–313
FIPA: “Agent Communicative Act Library Specification. available at http://www.fipa.org/specs
Greaves, M., Holmback, H., Bradshaw, J.: What is a conversation policy? In F. Dignum and M. Greaves (eds.): Issues in Agent Communication. (LNAI 1916). Springer-Verlag (2000) 118–131
Grosz, B. J., Sidner, C. L.: Plans for Discourse. In: P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. E. Pollack (eds.): Intentions in Communication. MIT Press (1990) 417–444
Jennings, N.R.: On agent-based software engineering. Artificial Intelligence 117 (2000) 277–296
Labrou, Y., Finin, T.: A semantics approach for KQML. In: Proc. of the Third International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, ACM Press (1994) 447–455
Lochbaum, K.E., Grosz, B. J., Sidner, C. L.: Models of Plans to Support Communication. In: Proc. 8th Nat. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI Press (1990) 485–490
Lochbaum, K.E.: The use of knowledge preconditions in language processing. In Proc. IJCAI-95 (1995) 1260–1266
Nodine. M., Fowler, J., Ksiezyk, T., Perry, B., Taylor, M., Unruh, A.: Active Information Gathering in InfoSleuth. Intl. Journal of Cooperative Information Systems 9 (2000) 3–28
Odell, J., Parnunak, H. V.D., Bauer, B.: Extending UML for Agents. In: Proc. Agent-Oriented Information Systems Workshop at the 17th Natl. Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI Press (2000)
Pitt, J., Mamdani, A.: Communication protocols in multi-agent systems. In F. Dignum and M. Greaves (eds.): Issues in Agent Communication. (LNAI 1916). Springer-Verlag (2000) 160–177
Rich, C., Sidner C. L.: COLLAGEN: When agents collaborate with people. In M. H. Huhns & M. P. Singh (eds.): Readings in Agents. Morgan Kaufmann (1994) 814–819
Sadek, M. D.: A Study in the Logic of Intention. In Proc. 3rd Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Morgan Kaufmann (1992) 462–473
Searle, J.: What is a Speech Act. In: Black, M. (ed.): Philosophy in America. Cornell Univ Press (1965) 221–239
Shoham, Y.: Agent Oriented Programming. Artificial Intelligence (1993) 51–92
Wagner, T., Benyo, B., Lesser, V., Xuan, P.: Investigating Interactions between Agent Conversations and Agent Control Components. In F. Dignum and M. Greaves (eds.): Issues in Agent Communication. (LNAI 1916). Springer-Verlag (2000) 301-314-330.
Werner, E.: Cooperating Agents: A Unified Theory of Communication and Social Structure. In: L. Gasser and M. H. Huhns (eds.): Distributed Artificial Intelligence Vol II. Pitnam Publishing (1989) 3–36
Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N.J., Kinny, D.: The Gaia Methodology for Agent-oriented analysis and design. Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems 3. Kluwer (2000) 285–312
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Petrinjak, A., Elio, R. (2003). Understanding “Not-Understood”: Towards an Ontology of Error Conditions for Agent Communication. In: Xiang, Y., Chaib-draa, B. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Canadian AI 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2671. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44886-1_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44886-1_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40300-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44886-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive