A verification framework for agent programming with declarative goals

✍ Scribed by F.S. de Boer; K.V. Hindriks; W. van der Hoek; J.-J.Ch. Meyer

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 286 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1570-8683
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jal.2005.12.014

✦ Synopsis

A long and lasting problem in agent research has been to close the gap between agent logics and agent programming frameworks. The main reason for this problem of establishing a link between agent logics and agent programming frameworks is identified and explained by the fact that agent programming frameworks have hardly incorporated the concept of a declarative goal. Instead, such frameworks have focused mainly on plans or goals-to-do instead of the end goals to be realised which are also called goals-to-be. In this paper, the programming language GOAL is introduced which incorporates such declarative goals. The notion of a commitment strategy-one of the main theoretical insights due to agent logics, which explains the relation between beliefs and goals-is used to construct a computational semantics for GOAL. Finally, a proof theory for proving properties of GOAL agents is introduced. Thus, the main contribution of this paper, rather than the language GOAL itself, is that we offer a complete theory of agent programming in the sense that our theory provides both for a programming framework and a programming logic for such agents. An example program is proven correct by using this programming logic.