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Formalizing tool use in intelligent environments

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Abstract

A concept of capability in multi-agent systems that incorporates a notion of tools that are available to an agent in the environment is formalised. Using tools as the realisation of external capability requires less theoretical apparatus than modelling the interaction between agents. The contribution of this paper is a formal BDI logic for expressing and manipulating properties of rational tool-using agents, termed here as extrospective agents. The logic is based on separating the agent actions and tool operations to manage the complexity of agent-agent and agent-environment interactions.

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Notes

  1. An example of being capable and not willing to do is that of a robot agent carrying a heavy object. Although it may have the capability to carry, it may not want to risk damage to itself and prefer to collaborate with other robot agents and jointly carry the heavy object.

  2. Note that \(\text{ Cap-Int }\) is not underlined as the other two modalities since it is just an alternative name to an existing modality and the agent index i has been added here to the internal capability to improve the consistency in this paper. The index has no effect on the definition and the related proofs.

  3. The word attentive conveys the notion that an agent is characterised by or giving attention to.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Daghan L. Acay, Liz Sonenberg & Gil Tidhar

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  1. Daghan L. Acay
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  2. Liz Sonenberg
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  3. Gil Tidhar
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Correspondence to Daghan L. Acay.

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Acay, D.L., Sonenberg, L. & Tidhar, G. Formalizing tool use in intelligent environments. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 10, 1597–1610 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-018-0755-x

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