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A complete coalition logic of temporal knowledge for multi-agent systems

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Abstract

Coalition logic (CL) is one of the most influential logical formalisms for strategic abilities of multi-agent systems. CL can specify what a group of agents can achieve through choices of their actions, denoted by [C]ϕ to state that a group of agents C can have a strategy to bring about ϕ by collective actions, no matter what the other agents do. However, CL lacks the temporal dimension and thus can not capture the dynamic aspects of a system. Therefore, CL can not formalize the evolvement of rational mental attitudes of the agents such as knowledge, which has been shown to be very useful in specifications and verifications of distributed systems, and has received substantial amount of studies. In this paper, we introduce coalition logic of temporal knowledge (CLTK), by incorporating a temporal logic of knowledge (Halpern and Vardi’s logic of CKL n ) into CL to equip CL with the power to formalize how agents’ knowledge (individual or group knowledge) evolves over the time by coalitional forces and the temporal properties of strategic abilities as well. Furthermore, we provide an axiomatic system for CLTK and prove that it is sound and complete, along with the complexity of the satisfiability problem which is shown to be EXPTIME-complete.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Qingliang Chen

  2. Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems, Griffith University, Brisbane, Qld, 4111, Australia

    Kaile Su

  3. Institute of Business Intelligence and Knowledge Discovery, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Yong Hu

  4. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, 510320, China

    Guiwu Hu

Authors
  1. Qingliang Chen
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  2. Kaile Su
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  3. Yong Hu
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  4. Guiwu Hu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guiwu Hu.

Additional information

Qingliang Chen received his PhD degree in computer science from Sun Yat-Sen University, China in 2007. He is currently an associate professor in Department of Computer Science, Jinan university, Cuangzhou, China. His research interests are modal logics and multi-agent systems.

Kaile Su received his PhD degree in mathematics from Nanjing University, China, in 1995. He is currently an associate professor in the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems, Griffith University, Australia. His research interests are modal logics and multiagent systems.

Yong Hu received his PhD degree in management information systems from Sun Yat-Sen University, China in 2007. He is currently a professor in the Institute of Business Intelligence and Knowledge Discovery at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. His research interests are in the areas of artificial intelligence and decision support systems.

Guiwu Hu received his PhD degree in computer science from South China University of Technology, China in 2004. He is currently a professor in School of Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, China. His research interest is artificial intelligence.

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Chen, Q., Su, K., Hu, Y. et al. A complete coalition logic of temporal knowledge for multi-agent systems. Front. Comput. Sci. 9, 75–86 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-014-4097-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-014-4097-3

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