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Architectures and Idioms: Making Progress in Agent Design

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Intelligent Agents VII Agent Theories Architectures and Languages (ATAL 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1986))

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Abstract

This chapter addresses the problem of producing and maintaining progress in agent design. New architectures often hold important insights into the problems of designing intelligence. Unfortunately, these ideas can be difficult to harness, because on established projects switching between architectures and languages carries high cost. We propose a solution whereby the research community takes responsibility for re-expressing innovations as idioms or extensions of one or more standard architectures. We describe the process and provide an example — the concept of a Basic Reactive Plan. This idiom occurs in several influential agent architectures, yet in others is difficult to express.We also discuss our proposal’s relation to the the roles of architectures, methodologies and toolkits in the design of agents.

LAS: also Computers and Cognition Group, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, 1735 Great Plain Avenue, Needham, MA 02492 las@olin.edu

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, 545 Technology Square, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Joanna Bryson & Lynn Andrea Stein

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  1. Joanna Bryson
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  2. Lynn Andrea Stein
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Sciences, “Cognitive Science”, University of Siena, piazza S.Francesco 8, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Cristiano Castelfranchi

  2. Department of Computer Science, York University, 4700 Keele Street, M3J 1P3, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Yves Lespérance

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bryson, J., Stein, L.A. (2001). Architectures and Idioms: Making Progress in Agent Design. In: Castelfranchi, C., Lespérance, Y. (eds) Intelligent Agents VII Agent Theories Architectures and Languages. ATAL 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1986. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44631-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44631-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42422-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44631-6

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