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Extending the Operational Semantics of a BDI Agent-Oriented Programming Language for Introducing Speech-Act Based Communication

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Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (DALT 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2990))

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Abstract

Work on agent communication languages has since long striven to achieve adequate speech act semantics; partly, the problem is that references to an agent’s architecture (in particular a BDI-like architecture) would be required in giving such semantics more rigorously. On the other hand, BDI agent-oriented programming languages have had their semantics formalised for abstract versions only, neglecting practical aspects such as communication primitives; this means that, at least in what concerns communication, implementations of BDI programming languages have been ad hoc. This paper tackles, however preliminarily, both these problems by giving semantics to speech-act based messages received by an AgentSpeak(L) agent. AgentSpeak(L) is a BDI, agent-oriented, logic programming language for which interpreters have been developed, and its theoretical foundations are of great interest. Our work here builds upon a structural operational semantics to AgentSpeak(L) that we have given in previous work. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: we here extend our earlier work on providing a solid theoretical background on which to base existing implementations of AgentSpeak(L) interpreters, as well as we shed light on a more computationally grounded approach to giving semantics for some key illocutionary forces used in speech-act based agent communication languages.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Informática Teórica, Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, 91501-970, Brazil

    Álvaro F. Moreira

  2. Centro de Ciências Exatas, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, CP 275, CEP 93022-000, São Leopoldo, RS, Brazil

    Renata Vieira

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZF, UK

    Rafael H. Bordini

Authors
  1. Álvaro F. Moreira
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  2. Renata Vieira
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  3. Rafael H. Bordini
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Informática, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516, Caparica, Portugal

    João Leite

  2. Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna a Cesena, via Venezia 52, 47023, Cesena, Italy

    Andrea Omicini

  3. Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, The University of Melbourne, 3010, Vic, Australia

    Leon Sterling

  4. DEIS, University of Bologna, V.le Risorgimento 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    Paolo Torroni

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Moreira, Á.F., Vieira, R., Bordini, R.H. (2004). Extending the Operational Semantics of a BDI Agent-Oriented Programming Language for Introducing Speech-Act Based Communication. In: Leite, J., Omicini, A., Sterling, L., Torroni, P. (eds) Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies. DALT 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2990. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25932-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25932-9_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22124-1

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