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Designing Adaptive Systems Using Teleo-Reactive Agents

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Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XVI

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TCCI,volume 8780))

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Abstract

Although adaptivity is a central feature of agents and multi-agent systems (MAS), there is no precise definition of it in the literature. What does it mean for an agent or for a MAS to be adaptive? How can we reason about and measure the ability of agents and MAS to adapt? How can we systematically design adaptive systems? In this paper, we provide a formal definition of adaptivity, and a framework for designing adaptive systems aimed at addressing these issues.

The definition of adaptivity, based on Dijkstra’s notion of self stabilisation, is independent of any particular mechanism for ensuring adaptivity, and any particular specification notation. The framework for designing adaptive systems is similarly independent of both implementation mechanisms and specification notation. It is based on the paradigm of teleo-reactive agents proposed by Nilsson: a paradigm in which agents move towards their goal in the presence of a continually changing environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Self-configuration can itself be viewed as a type of adaptivity in which the external action is the system initialisation.

  2. 2.

    We assume all input actions possible in the environment are included in the agent automaton, as are all of the agent’s possible output actions. Hence, no observable actions will be introduced or removed by such an external action.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant DP110101211 and the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund under the EAE project, grant number 072/2009/A3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Graeme Smith & Kirsten Winter

  2. African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Cape Town, South Africa

    J. W. Sanders

  3. Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    J. W. Sanders

Authors
  1. Graeme Smith
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  2. J. W. Sanders
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  3. Kirsten Winter
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Correspondence to Graeme Smith .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn Vic, Australia

    Ryszard Kowalczyk

  2. Institute of Informatics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland

    Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

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Smith, G., Sanders, J.W., Winter, K. (2014). Designing Adaptive Systems Using Teleo-Reactive Agents. In: Kowalczyk, R., Nguyen, N. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XVI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8780. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44871-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44871-7_2

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