Computational Logic Foundations of KGP Agents

This paper presents the computational logic foundations of a model of agency called the KGP (Knowledge, Goals and Plan model. This model allows the specification of heterogeneous agents that can interact with each other, and can exhibit both proactive and reactive behaviour allowing them to function in dynamic environments by adjusting their goals and plans when changes happen in such environments. KGP provides a highly modular agent architecture that integrates a collection of reasoning and physical capabilities, synthesised within transitions that update the agents state in response to reasoning, sensing and acting. Transitions are orchestrated by cycle theories that specify the order in which transitions are executed while taking into account the dynamic context and agent preferences, as well as selection operators for providing inputs to transitions

SOFTWARE ANATOMY OF A KGP AGENT

While there is much work in the literature on agent component technologies, there are comparatively few results on the engineering issues arising from the integration of these technologies into a complete and coherent agent architecture. This paper addresses these issues from both implementation and general architectural design point of view. The KGP (Knowledge, Goals and Plan) agent model developed in the EU SOCS project (IST-2001-32530) is used as an example to illustrate these engineering issues.