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Implementing Durative Actions with Failure Detection in Gwendolen

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Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13190))

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Abstract

We present an extension of the semantics for action execution in the Gwendolen BDI programming language. This extension firstly explicitly assumes that actions have durations and, moreover, that the reasoning cycle of the agent can not be stopped while such an action is executing but needs to continue in order to monitor for important external events. Secondly, the extension assumes that actions may often fail and this needs to be detected. This forms part of a larger project to develop a framework plan/action adaptation within BDI agents in order to enable long-term autonomy. We have implemented the extension and demonstrate its operation in a simple case study.

This work has been supported by The University of Manchester’s Department of Computer Science and the EPSRC “Robotics and AI for Nuclear” (EP/R026084/1) and “Future AI and Robotics for Space” (EP/R026092/1) Hubs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For simplicity of presentation, we here treat the intention as a stack of deeds but it should be noted that more information, such as the goal to be achieved, is also included in the full semantics.

  2. 2.

    This process of creating a new intention is not of relevance to this paper, but allows a Gwendolen agent to react to changes in its beliefs – e.g., to avoid an obstacle.

  3. 3.

    It is possible the failure conditions could be used here a bit like pre-conditions in capabilities, but that would really be an abuse of the notation.

  4. 4.

    Many robot path planning algorithms will reach their target events but when integrated with high level decision-making it is often announced that the robot has reached another waypoint.

  5. 5.

    The implementation can be found in https://github.com/peterstringer/mcapl/tree/dev.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Peter Stringer, Rafael C. Cardoso, Clare Dixon & Louise A. Dennis

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  1. Peter Stringer
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  2. Rafael C. Cardoso
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  3. Clare Dixon
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  4. Louise A. Dennis
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Correspondence to Peter Stringer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Natasha Alechina

  2. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni

  3. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Brian Logan

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Stringer, P., Cardoso, R.C., Dixon, C., Dennis, L.A. (2022). Implementing Durative Actions with Failure Detection in Gwendolen. In: Alechina, N., Baldoni, M., Logan, B. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13190. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97457-2_19

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