Formalisations of Capabilities for BDI-Agents

  • Authors:
  • Lin Padgham;Patrick Lambrix

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia 3001;Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköpings Universitet, Linköping, Sweden SE-581 83

  • Venue:
  • Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Intentional agent systems are increasingly being used in a wide range of complex applications. Capabilities has recently been introduced into some of these systems as a software engineering mechanism to support modularity and reusability while still allowing meta-level reasoning. This paper presents possible formalisations of capabilities within the framework of beliefs, goals and intentions and indicates how capabilities can affect agent reasoning about its intentions. We define a style of agent commitment which we refer to as a self-aware agent which allows an agent to modify its goals and intentions as its capabilities change. We also indicate which aspects of the specification of a BDI interpreter are affected by the introduction of capabilities and give some indications of additional reasoning which could be incorporated into an agent system on the basis of both the theoretical analysis and the existing implementation.