Agent programming in the cognitive era

It is claimed that, in the nascent ‘Cognitive Era’, intelligent systems will be trained using machine learning techniques rather than programmed by software developers. A contrary point of view argues that machine learning has limitations, and, taken in isolation, cannot form the basis of autonomous systems capable of intelligent behaviour in complex environments. In this paper, we explore the contributions that agent-oriented programming can make to the development of future intelligent systems. We briefly review the state of the art in agent programming, focussing particularly on BDI-based agent programming languages, and discuss previous work on integrating AI techniques (including machine learning) in agent-oriented programming. We argue that the unique strengths of BDI agent languages provide an ideal framework for integrating the wide range of AI capabilities necessary for progress towards the next-generation of intelligent systems. We identify a range of possible approaches to integrating AI into a BDI agent architecture. Some of these approaches, e.g., ‘AI as a service’, exploit immediate synergies between rapidly maturing AI techniques and agent programming, while others, e.g., ‘AI embedded into agents’ raise more fundamental research questions, and we sketch a programme of research directed towards identifying the most appropriate ways of integrating AI capabilities into agent programs

Programming multi-agent systems : first international workshop, ProMAS 2003, Melbourne, Australia, July 15, 2003 : selected revised and invited papers

"Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems have grown into a promising technology offering a credible alternative for the design of intelligent and cooperative systems. Recently, Efforts have been made to provide novel tools, methods, and frameworks to establish the necessary standards for wider use of MAS as a technology in itself, and not only as an attractive paradigm."--back cover

GROVE: A computationally grounded model for rational intention revision in BDI agents

A fundamental aspect of Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents is intention revision. Agents revise their intentions in order to maintain consistency between their intentions and beliefs, and consistency between intentions. A rational agent must also account for the optimality of their intentions in the case of revision. To that end I present GROVE, a model of rational intention revision for BDI agents. The semantics of a GROVE agent is defined in terms of constraints and preferences on possible future executions of an agent’s plans. I show that GROVE is weakly rational in the sense of Grant et al. and imposes more constraints on executions than the operational semantics for goal lifecycles proposed by Harland et al. As it may not be computationally feasible to consider all possible future executions, I propose a bounded version of GROVE that samples the set of future executions, and state conditions under which bounded GROVE commits to a rational execution

A platform-independent domain-specific modeling language for multiagent systems

Associated with the increasing acceptance of agent-based computing as a novel software engineering paradigm, recently a lot of research addresses the development of suitable techniques to support the agent-oriented software development. The state-of-the-art in agent-based software development is to (i) design the agent systems basing on an agent-based methodology and (ii) take the resulting design artifact as a base to manually implement the agent system using existing agent-oriented programming languages or general purpose languages like Java. Apart from failures made when manually transform an abstract specification into a concrete implementation, the gap between design and implementation may also result in the divergence of design and implementation. The framework discussed in this dissertation presents a platform-independent domain-specific modeling language for MASs called Dsml4MAS that allows modeling agent systems in a platform-independent and graphical manner. Apart from the abstract design, Dsml4MAS also allows to automatically (i) check the generated design artifacts against a formal semantic specification to guarantee the well-formedness of the design and (ii) translate the abstract specification into a concrete implementation. Taking both together, Dsml4MAS ensures that for any well-formed design, an associated implementation will be generated closing the gap between design and code.Aufgrund wachsender Akzeptanz von Agentensystemen zur Behandlung komplexer Problemstellungen wird der Schwerpunkt auf dem Gebiet der agentenorientierten Softwareentwicklung vor allem auf die Erforschung von geeignetem Entwicklungswerkzeugen gesetzt. Stand der Forschung ist es dabei das Agentendesign mittels einer Agentenmethodologie zu spezifizieren und die resultierenden Artefakte als Grundlage zur manuellen Programmierung zu verwenden. Fehler, die bei dieser manuellen Überführung entstehen, machen insbesondere das abstrakte Design weniger nützlich in Hinsicht auf die Nachhaltigkeit der entwickelten Softwareapplikation. Das in dieser Dissertation diskutierte Rahmenwerk erörtert eine plattformunabhängige domänenspezifische Modellierungssprache für Multiagentensysteme namens Dsml4MAS. Dsml4MAS erlaubt es Agentensysteme auf eine plattformunabhängige und graphische Art und Weise darzustellen. Die Modellierungssprache umfasst (i) eine abstrakte Syntax, die das Vokabular der Sprache definiert, (ii) eine konkrete Syntax, die die graphische Darstellung spezifiziert sowie (iii) eine formale Semantik, die dem Vokabular eine präzise Bedeutung gibt. Dsml4MAS ist Bestandteil einer (semi-automatischen) Methodologie, die es (i) erlaubt die abstrakte Spezifikation schrittweise bis hin zur konkreten Implementierung zu konkretisieren und (ii) die Interoperabilität zu alternativen Softwareparadigmen wie z.B. Dienstorientierte Architekturen zu gewährleisten

GROVE: A computationally grounded model for rational intention revision in BDI agents

A fundamental aspect of Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents is intention revision. Agents revise their intentions in order to maintain consistency between their intentions and beliefs, and consistency between intentions. A rational agent must also account for the optimality of their intentions in the case of revision. To that end I present GROVE, a model of rational intention revision for BDI agents. The semantics of a GROVE agent is defined in terms of constraints and preferences on possible future executions of an agent’s plans. I show that GROVE is weakly rational in the sense of Grant et al. and imposes more constraints on executions than the operational semantics for goal lifecycles proposed by Harland et al. As it may not be computationally feasible to consider all possible future executions, I propose a bounded version of GROVE that samples the set of future executions, and state conditions under which bounded GROVE commits to a rational execution