Logic-Based Specification Languages for Intelligent Software Agents

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGoLog, Agent-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, DyLog, Concurrent METATEM and Ehhf. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.Comment: 67 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Accepted for publication by the Journal "Theory and Practice of Logic Programming", volume 4, Maurice Bruynooghe Editor-in-Chie

Coordination using a Single-Writer Multiple-Reader Concurrent Logic Language

The principle behind concurrent logic programming is a set of processes which co-operate in monotonically constraining a global set of variables to particular values. Each process will have access to only some of the variables, and a process may bind a variable to a tuple containing further variables which may be bound later by other processes. This is a suitable model for a coordination language. In this paper we describe a type system which ensures the co-operation principle is never breached, and which makes clear through syntax the pattern of data flow in a concurrent logic program. This overcomes problems previously associated with the practical use of concurrent logic languages

A Linear Logic Programming Language for Concurrent Programming over Graph Structures

We have designed a new logic programming language called LM (Linear Meld) for programming graph-based algorithms in a declarative fashion. Our language is based on linear logic, an expressive logical system where logical facts can be consumed. Because LM integrates both classical and linear logic, LM tends to be more expressive than other logic programming languages. LM programs are naturally concurrent because facts are partitioned by nodes of a graph data structure. Computation is performed at the node level while communication happens between connected nodes. In this paper, we present the syntax and operational semantics of our language and illustrate its use through a number of examples.Comment: ICLP 2014, TPLP 201

Observational equivalences for linear logic CC languages

Linear logic Concurrent Constraint programming (LCC) is an extension of concurrent constraint programming (CC) where the constraint system is based on Girard's linear logic instead of the classical logic. In this paper we address the problem of program equivalence for this programming framework. For this purpose, we present a structural operational semantics for LCC based on a label transition system and investigate different notions of observational equivalences inspired by the state of art of process algebras. Then, we demonstrate that the asynchronous \pi-calculus can be viewed as simple syntactical restrictions of LCC. Finally we show LCC observational equivalences can be transposed straightforwardly to classical Concurrent Constraint languages and Constraint Handling Rules, and investigate the resulting equivalences.Comment: 17 page

Unity-Style Proofs for Shared Dataspace Programs Using Dynamic Statements

The term shared dataspace refers to the general class of programming languages in which the principal means of communication among the concurrent components of programs is a common, content-addressable data structure called a dataspace. In the programming language and artificial intelligence communities, there is considerable interest in such languages, e.g. logic-based languages, production rule systems, and the Linda language. However, these languages have not been the subject of extensive program verification research. This paper specifies a proof system for a shared dataspace programming notation called Swarm-- a program logic similar in style to that of UNITY. The paper then uses the logic to reason about a solution to the problem of labeling the connected equal-intensity regions of a digital image

Kernel Andorra Prolog and its computation model

The logic programming language framework Kernel Andorra Prolog is defined by a formal computation model. In Kernel Andorra Prolog, general combinations of concurrent reactive languages and nondeterministic transformational languages may be specified. The framework is based on constraints

Model Checking Linear Logic Specifications

The overall goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical foundations of algorithmic verification techniques for first order linear logic specifications. The fragment of linear logic we consider in this paper is based on the linear logic programming language called LO enriched with universally quantified goal formulas. Although LO was originally introduced as a theoretical foundation for extensions of logic programming languages, it can also be viewed as a very general language to specify a wide range of infinite-state concurrent systems. Our approach is based on the relation between backward reachability and provability highlighted in our previous work on propositional LO programs. Following this line of research, we define here a general framework for the bottom-up evaluation of first order linear logic specifications. The evaluation procedure is based on an effective fixpoint operator working on a symbolic representation of infinite collections of first order linear logic formulas. The theory of well quasi-orderings can be used to provide sufficient conditions for the termination of the evaluation of non trivial fragments of first order linear logic.Comment: 53 pages, 12 figures "Under consideration for publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

Lolliproc: to Concurrency from Classical Linear Logic via Curry-Howard and Control

While many type systems based on the intuitionistic fragment of linear logic have been proposed, applications in programming languages of the full power of linear logic-including double-negation elimination-have remained elusive. Meanwhile, linearity has been used in many type systems for concurrent programs-e.g., session types-which suggests applicability to the problems of concurrent programming, but the ways in which linearity has interacted with concurrency primitives in lambda calculi have remained somewhat ad-hoc. In this paper we connect classical linear logic and concurrent functional programming in the language Lolliproc, which provides simple primitives for concurrency that have a direct logical interpretation and that combine to provide the functionality of session types. Lolliproc features a simple process calculus “under the hood” but hides the machinery of processes from programmers. We illustrate Lolliproc by example and prove soundness, strong normalization, and confluence results, which, among other things, guarantees freedom from deadlocks and race conditions

Parallel logic programming systems

Projet CHLOEParallelizing logic programming has attracted much interest in the research community, because of the intrinsic or and and parallelisms of logic programs. One research stream aims at transparent exploitation of parallelism in existing logic programming languages such as Prolog while the family of concurrent logic languages develops constructs allowing programmers to express the concurrency, that is the communication and synchronization between parallel process, inside their algorithms. This paper mainly concentrates on transparent exploitation of parallelism and surveys the most mature solutions to the problems to be solved in order to obtain efficient implementations. These solutions have been implemented and the most efficient parallel logic programming systems reach effective speedups over state-of-the-art sequential Prolog implementations. The paper also addresses current and prospective research issues aiming to extend the applicability and the efficiency of existing systems,such as models merging the transparent parallelism and the concurrent logic languages approaches, combination of constraint logic programming with parallelism and use of highly parallel architectures