Skip to main content

Proactive Communications in Agent Teamwork

  • Conference paper
Book cover Advances in Agent Communication (ACL 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2922))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The capabilities for agents in a team to anticipate information-needs of teammates and proactively offer relevant information are highly desirable. However, such behaviors have not been fully prescribed by existing agent theories. To establish a theory about proactive information exchanges, we first introduces the concept of ”information-needs”, then identify and formally define the intentional semantics of two proactive communicative acts, which highly depend on the speaker’s awareness of others’ information-needs. It is shown that communications using these proactive performatives can be derived as helping behaviors. Conversation policies involving these proactive performatives are also discussed. The work in this paper may serve as a guide for the specification and design of agent architectures, algorithms, and applications that support proactive communications in agent teamwork.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Rouse, W., Cannon-Bowers, J., Salas, E.: The role of mental models in team performance in complex systems. IEEE Trans. on Sys., man, and Cyber 22, 1296–1308 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Grosz, B., Kraus, S.: Collaborative plans for complex group actions. Artificial Intelligence 86, 269–358 (1996)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Grosz, B., Kraus, S.: The evolution of sharedplans. In: Rao, A., Wooldridge, M. (eds.) Foundations and Theories of Rational Agencies, pp. 227–262 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Performatives in a rationally based speech act theory. In: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 79–88 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Rational interaction as a basis for communication. In: Intentions in Communication, pp. 221–255. MIT Press, Cambridge (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Smith, I., Cohen, P., Bradshaw, J., Greaves, M., Holmback, H.: Designing conversation policies using joint intention theory. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS 1998), pp. 269–276 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Searle, J.R.: How performatives work. Linguistics and Philosophy 12, 535–558 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Communicative actions for artificial agents. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Smith, I.A., Cohen, P.R.: Toward a semantics for an agent communications language based on speech-acts. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 1996), pp. 24–31. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  10. FIPA: Agent communication language specification (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  11. OAIS: Reference model for an open archival information system (1999), http://www.ccsds.org/documents/pdf/CCSDS-650.0-R-1.pdf

  12. Searle, J.: Indirect speech acts. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J. (eds.) Syntax and semantics. III. Speech acts, pp. 59–82. Academic Press, NY (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Huber, M.J., Kumar, S., Cohen, P.R., McGee, D.R.: A formal semantics for proxycommunicative acts. In: Meyer, J.-J.C., Tambe, M. (eds.) ATAL 2001. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2333, p. 221. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Greaves, M., Holmback, H., Bradshaw, J.: What is a conversation policy? In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies at Autonomous Agents 1999 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Singh, M.P.: A social semantics for agent communication languages. In: Dignum, F., Greaves, M. (eds.) Issues in Agent Communication, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Parunak, C.: Visualizing agent conversations: Using enhanced dooley graphs for agent design and analysis. In: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Multi-Agent Syatems (ICMAS 1996), pp. 275–282 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Cost, R., Chen, Y., Finin, T., Labrou, Y., Peng, Y.: Modeling agent conversations with colored petri nets. In: Proceedings of workshop on Agent Conversation Policies at Agents 1999, Seattle, WA (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kumar, S., Huber, M.J., Cohen, P.R., McGee, D.R.: Toward a formalism for conversation protocols using joint intention theory. Computational Intelligence 18, 174–228 (2002)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  19. Austin, J.: How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1962)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Searle, J.: Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1969)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Breiter, P., Sadek, M.: A rational agent as a kernel of a cooperative dialogue system: Implementing a logical theory of interaction. In: Proceedings of ECAI 1996 workshop on Agent Theories, architectures, and Languages, pp. 261–276. Springer, Berlin (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Labrou, Y., Finin, T.: Semantics and conversations for an agent communication language. In: Huhns, M., Singh, M. (eds.) Readings in Agents, pp. 235–242. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Pitt, J., Mamdani, A.: A protocol-based semantics for an agent communication language. In: Proceedings of IJCAI 1999, pp. 486–491 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Labrou, Y.: Standardizing agent communication. In: Marik, V., Stepankova, O. (eds.) Multi-Agent Systems and Applications (Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence) (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Vitteau, B., Huget, M.P.: Modularity in interaction protocols. In: Dignum, F.P.M. (ed.) ACL 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2922, pp. 291–309. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Chopra, A., Singh, M.: Nonmonotonic commitment machines. In: Dignum, F.P.M. (ed.) ACL 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2922, pp. 183–200. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Singh, M.P.: Agent communication languages: Rethinking the principles. IEEE Computer 31, 40–47 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Kahn, M., Cicalese, C.: The CoABS Grid. In: JPL Workshop on Rational Agent Concepts, Tysons Corner, VA (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Tambe, M.: Towards flexible teamwork. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 7, 83–124 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Gray, R., Cybenko, G., Kotz, D., Peterson, R., Rus, D.: D’agents: Applications and performance of a mobile-agent system. Software, Practices and Experience 32, 543–573 (2002)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Yen, J., Yin, J., Ioerger, T., Miller, M., Xu, D., Volz, R.: CAST: Collaborative agents for simulating teamworks. In: Proceedings of IJCAI 2001, pp. 1135–1142 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Yen, J., Fan, X., Volz, R.A. (2004). Proactive Communications in Agent Teamwork. In: Dignum, F. (eds) Advances in Agent Communication. ACL 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2922. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24608-4_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24608-4_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20769-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24608-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics