An Ontology for Collaborative Tasks in Multi-agent Systems

Abstract. This paper proposes an ontology for task representation and inference. The ontology was developed to support reasoning about tasks, such as task recognition and relocation. Our proposal is formalized in OWL (Web Ontology Language) and SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language). We show one scenario to exemplify reasoning situations based on the axioms and rules of our ontology. This knowledge-level representation of tasks can be explored to support reasoning about activities for groups of people. The knowledge asserted and inferred in the ontology is useful in multi-agent systems to enhance agent coordination and collaboration through reasoning over tasks. An evaluation of the proposed ontology is presented