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vGOAL: A GOAL-Based Specification Language for Safe Autonomous Decision-Making

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Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 14378))

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Abstract

Formal verification is a reliable approach to addressing safety concerns in autonomous applications. We have designed vGOAL based on the internal logic of the GOAL agent programming language, which serves as the formal specification language of our innovative formal approach to safe autonomous decision-making. A detailed description of vGOAL is necessary to present and justify our approach to safe autonomous decision-making, yet it is currently missing. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of vGOAL, including its formal syntax, its operational semantics, a real-world robotic application, and a comparison with several comparable agent programming languages, namely, GOAL, Gwendolen, and AgentSpeak (Jason).

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Acknowledgements

This research is partially funded by the Research Fund KU Leuven. We thank Jens Vankeirsbilck for providing Fig. 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven, 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Yi Yang & Tom Holvoet

Authors
  1. Yi Yang
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  2. Tom Holvoet
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Correspondence to Yi Yang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of St.Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Andrei Ciortea

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Mehdi Dastani

  3. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Jieting Luo

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Yang, Y., Holvoet, T. (2023). vGOAL: A GOAL-Based Specification Language for Safe Autonomous Decision-Making. In: Ciortea, A., Dastani, M., Luo, J. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14378. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-48538-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-48539-8

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