Logic and artificial intelligence for multi-agent systems

NASA Monographs in Systems and Software Engineering, 2006

As has been discussed elsewhere , much agent-related work has tended to focus on either the development of practical applications, or the development of sophisticated logics for reasoning about agents. Our own view is that work on formal models of agent-based systems is valuable inasmuch as they contribute to a fundamental goal of computing to build real agent systems. This is not to trivialise or denigrate the effort of formal approaches, but to direct them towards integration in a broader research programme. In an ongoing project that has been running for several years, we have sought to do exactly that through the development of a formal framework, known as SMART, that provides a conceptual infrastructure for the analysis and modelling of agents and multi-agent systems on the one hand, and enables implemented and deployed systems to be evaluated and compared on the other. In this paper, we describe our research programme, review its achievements to date, and suggest directions for the future.

2003

In this paper we address the task of organising multi-agent systems in order to collectively solve problems. We base our approach on a logical model of rational agency comprising a few simple, but powerful, concepts. While many other researchers have tackled this problem using formal logic, the important aspect of the work described here is that the logical descriptions of the agents are directly executable using the Concurrent MetateM framework, allowing the execution of agents described in a combination of temporal, belief and ability logics. Here, we are particularly concerned with exploring some of the possible logical constraints that may be imposed upon these agents, and how these constraints affect the ability of the agents to come together to collectively solve problems.

2012

The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW for short), in its second edition this year after the success of MAL-LOW'007 held in Durham (UK), is a forum for researchers interested in sharing their experiences in agents and multi-agent systems. MALLOW'009 was held at the Educatorio della Provvidenza, in Torino (Italy), from September 7th, 2009 through September 10th, 2009. In particular, this edition includes the workshops: -Agents, Web Services and Ontologies, Integrated Methodologies (MALLOW-AWESOME'009); -Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems & On-line Communities (COIN@MALLOW'009); -Formal Approaches to Multi-Agent Systems (FAMAS'09); -LAnguages, methodologies and Development tools for multi-agent systemS (LADS'009); -Multi-Agent Systems and Simulation (MAS&S'09). MALLOW-AWESOME'009 wants to stimulate discussion among researchers working on Agents, Web Services, and Ontologies, in order to help the identification and the definition of Methodologies for integrating them. The realisation of distributed, open, dynamic, and heterogeneous software systems is, in fact, a challenge that involves many facets, from formal theories to software engineering and practical applications. Scientists in various research areas, such as Semantic Web, Web Services, Agents, Ontologies, are attacking this problem from different perspectives. MALLOW-AWESOME'009 attempts to provide a discussion forum for collecting and comparing such diverse experiences with the aim of fostering cross fertilization. COIN@MALLOW'009 belongs to the COIN workshop series, which brings together the topics of coordination, organization, institutions and norms in the context of multi-agent systems. This edition of COIN focusses on these issues in the context of on-line communities, where we seek contributions that explore the dimensions of social, legal, economic and technological norms as they affect agent-agent, agent-human, human-human interactions. FAMAS'09, the fourth edition of the FAMAS workshop series, after FAMA-S'03 affiliated to ETAPS'03 in Warsaw, FAMAS'06 affiliated with ECAI'06 in Riva del Garda, and FAMAS'007 affiliated with MALLOW'007 in Durham, aims at bringing together researchers from the fields of logic, theoretical computer science and multiagent systems in order to discuss formal techniques for specifying and verifying multi-agent systems. LADS'009 aims to offer a rich forum for leading researchers, from both academia and industry, interested in sharing their experiences about the theory VI and practice of formal approaches, programming languages, tools and techniques that support the development and deployment of multi-agent systems. These are gaining increasing attention in important application areas such as electronic institutions, semantic web, web services, security, grid computing, ambient intelligence, pervasive computing, electronic contracting, among others. MAS&S'09 aims at providing a forum for discussing recent advances on the integration of Simulation and Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies and techniques for the analysis, design, validation and implementation of Multi-Agent Systems. MALLOW'009 has hosted also a special event, the COST AT Argumentation Day, organized by Guido Boella and Leendert van der Torre. The event discussed new directions in argumentation, such as temporal dynamics, fibring of argumentation frameworks, modal logics of argumentation, modal provability foundations for argumentation, etc. The day was opened by one of the four MALLOW'009 invited speakers, Dov Gabbay. Besides Dov Gabbay, the organizers were very honored to have also Fabio Bellifemine, Alexis Tsoukias, and Franco Zambonelli as invited speakers. Following the tradition of the previous edition, MALLOW'009 was part of Agents'009 that includes also EASSS'09, the eleventh edition of the European Agent Systems Summer School. This volume contains the proceedings of the five workshops, for a total of forty-seven high quality papers, which were selected by the programme committees of the workshops for presentation. The volume is organized as follows. Besides this overall presentation, each workshop has an introductory essay, authored by the organizers, which presents the workshop, lists the programme committee members and additional reviewers, the accepted papers with their authors, and the workshop sponsors. It is followed by the workshop papers. The table of contents of this volume reports, for each workshop, the page number of its introductory essay and the first page of the workshop papers. We would like to thank all authors for their contributions, the members of the Steering Committee for the precious suggestions and support, and the members of the Programme Committees and the additional reviewers for the excellent work during the reviewing phase, the sponsors, the head of the Educatorio della Provvidenza, and all the persons who helped the organization of this event.

Theory and Practice of Logic Programming - TPLP, 2004

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGolog, AGENT-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, Dylog, Concurrent METATEM and E hhf . For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.