4,109 research outputs found
A principled information valuation for communications during multi-agent coordination
Decentralised coordination in multi-agent systems is typically achieved using communication. However, in many cases, communication is expensive to utilise because there is limited bandwidth, it may be dangerous to communicate, or communication may simply be unavailable at times. In this context, we argue for a rational approach to communication --- if it has a cost, the agents should be able to calculate a value of communicating. By doing this, the agents can balance the need to communicate with the cost of doing so. In this research, we present a novel model of rational communication that uses information theory to value communications, and employ this valuation in a decision theoretic coordination mechanism. A preliminary empirical evaluation of the benefits of this approach is presented in the context of the RoboCupRescue simulator
A conceptual framework for interactive virtual storytelling
This paper presents a framework of an interactive storytelling system. It can integrate five components: management centre, evaluation centre, intelligent virtual agent, intelligent virtual environment, and users, making possible interactive solutions where the communication among these components is conducted in a rational and intelligent way. Environment plays an important role in providing heuristic information for agents through communicating with the management centre. The main idea is based on the principle of heuristic guiding of the behaviour of intelligent agents for guaranteeing the unexpectedness and consistent themes
Behavioral types in programming languages
A recent trend in programming language research is to use behav- ioral type theory to ensure various correctness properties of large- scale, communication-intensive systems. Behavioral types encompass concepts such as interfaces, communication protocols, contracts, and choreography. The successful application of behavioral types requires a solid understanding of several practical aspects, from their represen- tation in a concrete programming language, to their integration with other programming constructs such as methods and functions, to de- sign and monitoring methodologies that take behaviors into account. This survey provides an overview of the state of the art of these aspects, which we summarize as the pragmatics of behavioral types
Towards a Conceptualization of Sociomaterial Entanglement
In knowledge representation, socio-technical systems can be modeled
as multiagent systems in which the local knowledge of each individual agent can
be seen as a context. In this paper we propose formal ontologies as a means to
describe the assumptions driving the construction of contexts as local theories and
to enable interoperability among them. In particular, we present two alternative
conceptualizations of the notion of sociomateriality (and entanglement), which
is central in the recent debates on socio-technical systems in the social sciences,
namely critical and agential realism.
We thus start by providing a model of entanglement according to the critical realist
view, representing it as a property of objects that are essentially dependent on
different modules of an already given ontology. We refine then our treatment by
proposing a taxonomy of sociomaterial entanglements that distinguishes between
ontological and epistemological entanglement. In the final section, we discuss the
second perspective, which is more challenging form the point of view of knowledge
representation, and we show that the very distinction of information into
modules can be at least in principle built out of the assumption of an entangled
reality
An Abstract Formal Basis for Digital Crowds
Crowdsourcing, together with its related approaches, has become very popular
in recent years. All crowdsourcing processes involve the participation of a
digital crowd, a large number of people that access a single Internet platform
or shared service. In this paper we explore the possibility of applying formal
methods, typically used for the verification of software and hardware systems,
in analysing the behaviour of a digital crowd. More precisely, we provide a
formal description language for specifying digital crowds. We represent digital
crowds in which the agents do not directly communicate with each other. We
further show how this specification can provide the basis for sophisticated
formal methods, in particular formal verification.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure
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
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