Abstract
An important problem in agent verification is a lack of proper understanding of the relation between agent programs on the one hand and agent logics on the other. Understanding this relation would help to establish that an agent programming language is both conceptually well-founded and well-behaved, as well as yield a way to reason about agent programs by means of agent logics. As a step toward bridging this gap, we study several issues that need to be resolved in order to establish a precise mathematical relation between a modal agent logic and an agent programming language specified by means of an operational semantics. In this paper, we present an agent programming theory that provides both an agent programming language as well as a corresponding agent verification logic to verify agent programs. The theory is developed in stages to show, first, how a modal semantics can be grounded in a state-based semantics, and, second, how denotational semantics can be used to define the mathematical relation connecting the logic and agent programming language. Additionally, it is shown how to integrate declarative goals and add precompiled plans to the programming theory. In particular, we discuss the use of the concept of higher-order goals in our theory. Other issues such as a complete axiomatization and the complexity of decision procedures for the verification logic are not the focus of this paper and remain for future investigation.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Baral C., Son T.C. (1998) Relating theories of action and reactive control. Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence 2: 211–271
Baral, C., Son, T. C., & Tuan, L. C. (2002). A transition function based characterization of actions with delayed and continuous effects. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Principles and Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR’02), pp. 291–301.
Barber, K. S., & Martin, C. E. (1999). Agent autonomy: Specification, measurement, and dynamic adjustment. In Proceedings of the Autonomy Control Software Workshop, pp. 8–15.
Birna van Riemsdijk, M., de Boer, F. S., Dastani, M., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2006). Prototyping 3APL in the Maude term rewriting language. In Proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS’06), pp. 1279–1281.
Birnavan Riemsdijk M., de Boer F.S., Meyer J.-J.Ch. (2006) Dynamic logic for plan revision in agent programming. Journal of Logic and Computation 16(3): 375–402
Blackburn, P., de Rijke, M., & Venema, Y. (2001). Modal logic. Cambridge University Press.
Bordini, R. H., Dastani, M., Dix, J., & El Fallah Seghrouchni, A. (Eds.) (2005). Multi-agent programming: Languages, platforms and applications. Springer.
Bordini R.H., Fisher M., Visser W., Wooldridge M. (2006) Verifying multi-agent programs by model checking. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 12(2): 239–256
Bradshaw, J. M., Jung, H., Kulkarni, S., Johnson, M., Feltovich, P., Allen, J., Bunch, L., Chambers,~N., Galescu, L., Jeffers, R., Suri, N., Taysom, W., & Uszok, A. (2005). Toward trustworthy adjustable autonomy in KAOS. In Trusting Agents for Trusting Electronic Societies, pp. 18–42.
Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, plans, and practical reasoning. Harvard University Press.
Chellas, B. F. (1980). Modal logic: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.
Cohen P.R., Levesque H.J. (1990) Intention is choice with commitment. Artificial Intelligence 42: 213–261
Dastani, M., de Boer, F. S., Dignum, F. P. M., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2003). Programming agent deliberation: An approach illustrated using the 3APL language. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS’03), pp. 97–104.
Dastani, M. M., van Riemsdijk, M. B., Dignum, F. P. M., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2004). A programming language for cognitive agents: Goal-directed 3APL. In M. Dastani, J. Dix, & A. El Fallah-Seghrouchni (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS’03) (pp. 111–130).
de Bakker, J. (1980). Mathematical theory of program correctness. Prentice-Hall.
de Boer F.S., Hindriks K.V., van der Hoek W., Meyer J.-J.Ch. (2007) A verification framework for agent programming with declarative goals. Journal of Applied Logic 5: 277–302
Fagin, R., Halpern, J. Y., Moses, Y., & Vardi, M. Y. (1995). Reasoning about knowledge. MIT Press.
Fagin R., Halpern J.Y., Vardi M.Y. (1991) A model-theoretic analysis of knowledge. Journal of the ACM 38(2): 382–428
Fisher, M. (2006). METATEM: The story so far. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Programming Multiagent Systems (ProMAS’05), Revised and Invited Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3862, Springer, Berlin, pp. 3–22.
Frankfurt H. (1971) Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy 68(1): 5–20
Georgeff, M. P., & Lansky, A. L. (1987). Reactive reasoning and planning. In Proceedings of the 6th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 677–682.
Harel, D., Kozen, D., & Tiuryn, J. (2000). Dynamic logic. MIT Press.
Hindriks, K. V., de Boer, F. S., van der Hoek, W., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2000). Agent programming with declarative goals. In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Intelligent Agents. Agent Theories Architectures and Languages (ATAL’00), pp. 228–243.
Hindriks, K. V., de Boer, F. S., van der Hoek, W., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2001). A programming logic for part of the agent language 3APL. In Proceedings of the 1st Goddard Workshop on Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, pp. 78–89.
Hindriks, K. V., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (2007). Agent logics as program logics: Grounding KARO. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual German Conference on AI (KI’06).
Hustadt, U., Dixon, C., Schmidt, R. A., Fisher, M., Meyer, J.-J. Ch. & van der Hoek, W. (2001). Reasoning about agents in the KARO framework. In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME’01), pp. 206–213.
Lifschitz, V. (1986). On the semantics of STRIPS. In Reasoning about Actions and Plans, pp. 1–9.
Luck, M., & d’Inverno, M. (1998). Motivated behaviour for goal adoption. In Selected Papers from the 4th Australian Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems: Theories, Languages, and Applications, pp. 58–73.
McCarthy, J., & Hayes, P. J. (1969). Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In Machine Intelligence, pp. 463–502.
MeyerJ.-J.Ch.vander Hoek W. (1995) Epistemic logic for AI and computer science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Moffat, D., & Frijda, N. H. (1995). Where there’s a will there’s an agent. In Intelligent Agents, ECAI-94 Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, pp. 245–260.
Nguyen L.A. (2005) On the complexity of fragments of modal logics. In Advances in Modal Logic 5: 249–268
Norman, T. J., & Long, D. (1995). Goal creation in motivated agents. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, pp. 277–290.
Plotkin, G. D. (1981). A structural approach to operational semantics. Technical Report DAIMI FN-19, University of Aarhus.
Pokahr, A., Braubach, L., & Lamersdorf, W. (2005). A goal deliberation strategy for BDI agent systems. In Third German Conference on Multi-Agent Technologies and Systems (MATES’05), pp. 82–93.
Rao, A. S. (1996). AgentSpeak(L): BDI agents speak out in a logical computable language. In Agents Breaking Away, pp. 42–55.
Rao, A. S., & Georgeff, M. P. (1993). Intentions and rational commitment. Technical Report 8, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute.
Sardina, S., & Shapiro, S. (2003). Rational action in agent programs with prioritized goals. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS’03), pp. 417–424.
Shapiro, S., Lesperance, Y., & Levesque, H. (2005). Goal change. In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’05), pp. 582–588.
Sloman, A., & Croucher, M. (1981). Why robots will have emotions. In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’81), pp. 197–202.
van der Hoek, W., van Linder, B., & Meyer, J.-J. Ch. (1999). An integrated modal approach to rational agents. In Foundations of Rational Agency (pp. 133–168). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
van der Hoek W., Wooldridge M. (2003) Towards a logic of rational agency. Logic Journal of the IGPL 11(2): 133–157
van Ditmarsch, H., van der Hoek, W., & Kooi, B. (2007). Dynamic epistemic logic. Springer.
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Part of this research was carried out while the first author was affiliated with the Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Hindriks, K.V., Meyer, JJ.C. Toward a programming theory for rational agents. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 19, 4–29 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-008-9065-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-008-9065-6