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Algebraic specification of agent computation

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Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing Aims and scope

Abstract

Algebraic specification techniques can be applied to many aspects of software agents and multi-agent systems. This paper presents an algebraic framework, the Ψ- calculus, suitable for specifying the computations of complex agents that have a sense–compute–act computation cycle and that employ stored plan execution as the basis of behaviour generation. The framework provides a complete operational semantics of a plan-based programming language for such agents, covering all aspects of computation from the execution of basic plan steps through to the top-level control cycle which determines how external interactions occur. The semantics is specified compactly in process algebraic style by a hierarchy of rewrite rules, and has safety, guarantee and compositionality properties that facilitate reasoning about agent program behaviour.

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Kinny, D. Algebraic specification of agent computation. AAECC 16, 77–111 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00200-005-0172-1

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