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Specifying communicative multi-agent systems

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Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Formalisms, Methodologies, and Applications (DAI 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1441))

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Abstract

In this paper, we describe a framework for specifying communicative multi-agent systems, using a theory of action based on the situation calculus to describe the effects of actions on the world and on the mental states of agents; and the concurrent, logic programming language ConGolog to specify the actions performed by each agent. Since ConGolog has a well-defined semantics, the specifications can be used to reason about the behavior of individual agents and the system as a whole. We extend the work presented in [7] to allow the specifications to mention agents’ goals explicitly. The framework presented here allows the behavior of different agents to be specified at different levels of abstraction, using a rich set of programming language constructs. As an example, we specify a meeting scheduler multi-agent system.

This research received financial support from the Information Technology Research Centre (Ontario, Canada), the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (Canada), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada). We thank Wayne Wobcke for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, M5S 3G4, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Steven Shapiro & Hector J. Levesque

  2. Department of Computer Science, Glendon College, York University, M4N 3M6, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Yves Lespérance

Authors
  1. Steven Shapiro
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  2. Yves Lespérance
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  3. Hector J. Levesque
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Wayne Wobcke Maurice Pagnucco Chengqi Zhang

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Shapiro, S., Lespérance, Y., Levesque, H.J. (1998). Specifying communicative multi-agent systems. In: Wobcke, W., Pagnucco, M., Zhang, C. (eds) Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Formalisms, Methodologies, and Applications. DAI 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1441. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055016

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055016

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64769-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68722-1

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