Programming of agents in the PRALU language

2007

The development of isolated agents involves the manipulatioiJ of components such as actions, mental attitudes and decisions. Multi-agent systems have to deal with these components from different agents, without to forget the privacy and autonomy of each agent. For programming simple agents, both object-oriented and logic paradigms have shown advantages in terms of behavior encapsulation and mental model manipulation, respectively. Multi-paradigm languages allowing the usage of both programming paradigms can sol ve sorne troubles in agent-oriented programming. However, problems about interaction among agents, especially in physically distributed environments, can not directly be sol ved with that solution. This paper presents an approach based on the usage of logic modules for supporting interaction among agents in a multi-paradigm environment. Logic modules encapsulate a part of a mental state of an agent, being each logic module composed by a sequence of clauses. Objects representing agents manipulate these logic modules. They can transport their own logic modules to the location of another agent. Thus, agents can integrate logic knowledge to their own decision process.

Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2008

Topics in Artificial Intelligence, 1995

2008

Multi-agent systems are used as a solution for complex and distributed systems. Since agents are autonomous they can be coordinated exogenously by a coordination language Reo. Reo coordinates agents without having any knowledge about agents. We apply organizational concepts to analyze and design such systems. In this paper, we propose a formal model to specify the results achieved during these phases. This formal model helps in designing a coherent and consistent system. The formal model is applied to make the implementation of system by Reo systematically. We will specify and implement system by Reo according to the formal model. This paper also defines how to convert the formal specification to a Reo circuit by providing Reo circuits for the different patterns of interaction protocols and how to compose simpler circuits to support more complex patterns.

The agent/multi-agent system paradigm is an important field inside Artificial Intelligence. The use of this paradigm in real-world problems and the existence of development methods and related toolkits are currently two of the main lines of interest in this area. In order to try to solve these problems, it is necessary to develop and make use of agent/multi-agent architectures and development tools. This paper presents a development method for real-time multi-agent systems, called RT-MESSAGE, and an implementation toolkit, called InSiDE+. The developed systems are based on the SIMBA architecture.

VII Argentine Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, 2005

Abstract. The interaction primitives we report here were motivated by the implementation of multi-agent systems for dynamic and distributed environments, where intelligent agents communicate and collaborate. Since Prolog is widely adopted for the development of intelligent agents, our goal was to extend this language with a set of primitives that facilitate the implementation of the interaction among agents. The primitives that have been implemented allow the creation of several independent multi-agent systems, where ...

In the last decades, a significant growth of agent oriented systems has been observed, which has stimulated a more precise formalism for the definition of both agent and multi-agent systems, as well as the release of a huge number of agent development environment. In this work a new programming paradigm is proposed, that is agent oriented programming instead of object oriented programming. The guidelines for the realization of a suited agent programming language, that is an agent oriented language, can be derived according to the basic characteristics that software agents must have. As well as object oriented programming fully exploits the structured programming basic concepts, agent oriented programming will strongly benefit of both the object oriented model and logic programming theoretical basis. A project for the development of a novel architecture has been presented for software agents' development in an agent based system that is an Agent Programming Framework based on the Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR).

Expert Systems, 1994

Abstract: A language for multi-agent system design (MAPS) is presented and discussed in this paper. Any agent in MAPS is thought of as an expert system standing on its own. It can communicate through synchronous and asynchronous message sending. Dedicated behaviours are provided which specify how incoming messages are processed. Inter-agent cooperation is controlled via production rules. Two pre-defined agent classes are provided, which are given specific problem-solving roles: Knowledge Server (KS) agents are meant to maintain and transmit knowledge about problem-solving states, while Knowledge Processor (KP) agents are meant to process these elements in order to progress towards a solution. The duality between agent and resource modelling levels on the one hand and between KS and KP modelling styles on the other is shown to allow the specification of various control strategies. The environment is currently running on HP, SUN and DEC workstations.

… of Workshop on …, 2000

Before the powerful agent programming paradigm can be adopted in commercial or industrial settings, a complete environment, similar to that for other programming languages must be developed. This includes, editors, libraries, and an environment for the completion of agent tasks. The DECAF[8] Agent architecture is a general purpose agent development platform that was designed specifically to support concurrency, distributed operations, support for high level programming paradigms and high throughput. The architecture has been designed with built-in scalability which adapts itself to multiple processor architecture and highly distributed multiagent systems. DECAF supports research efforts in planning and scheduling with modular design. The architecture also supports application development and has current developments in social modeling, middle agents, information extraction and proxy operations. DECAF also supports the next step in the progression of the programming paradigm by allowing "flexible" and "structured persistent" actions . This paper is a case study of the development of the DECAF architecture, tools that have been developed concurrently to support programming and testing, and some of the more significant applications designed using DECAF.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

In this paper, we study the operational semantics of agent communication languages. We develop a basic multi-agent programming language for systems of concurrently operating agents, into which agent communication languages can be integrated. In this language, each agent has a mental state comprised of an informational component and a motivational component; interaction between the agents proceeds via a rendezvous communication mechanism. The language builds upon well-understood concepts from the object-oriented programming paradigm as object classes, method invocations and object creation. The formal semantics of the language are de ned by means of transition rules that describe its operational behaviour. Moreover, the operational semantics closely follow the syntactic structure of the language, and hence give rise to an abstract machine to interpret it.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

The notion of agents has provided a way of imbuing traditional computing systems with an extra degree of flexibility that allows them to be more resilient and robust in the face of more varied and unpredictable forms of interaction. One class of agents, typically called intelligent agents, represent their world symbolically according to their beliefs, have goals which need to be achieved, and adopt plans or intentions to achieve them. Now, one approach to building agents is to design a programming language whose semantics are based on some theory of rational or intentional agency and to program the desired behaviour of individual agents directly using mental attitudes. Such a technique is referred to as agent oriented programming. Arguably, the most innovative of these languages is 3APL (pronounced "triple-a-p-l") which supports the construction of intelligent agents for the development of complex systems through a set of intuitive concepts like beliefs, goals and plans. In this paper, we provide a Z specification of the programming language 3APL which provides a basis for implementation and also adds to a growing library of agent techniques and features.

2004

Abstract In multiagent systems, agent interaction is ruled by means of interaction protocols. Compliance to protocols can be hardwired in agent programs; however, this requires that only" certified" agents interact. In open societies, composed of autonomous and heterogeneous agents whose internal structure is, in general, not accessible, interaction protocols should be specified in terms of the agent observable behaviour, and compliance should be verified by an external entity.

International Journal of Applied Information Systems, 2013

A multi-agents system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents who can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Multi-agents systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. This is the reason why they are brought up and used in several application domains. In this paper, we present the application of the multi-agents systems in the remote control, network security and telecommunication domains. Those applications are realized by the System Architecture Team of the ENSEM, Hassan II University. In the first section of this paper, we present the multi-agents approach. In the second section, we describe different architectures, based on multi-agents systems, proposed by the system architecture team of ENSEM, Hassan II University. In the third section, we present a realization in order to validate our architectures and the choice of the multi-agents approach.

… in computer and information sciences' 98: …, 1998

Effective co-operation among agents requires a common communication language. In the past, research on software agents concentrated on agent architectures, problem-specific agent types, and general agent properties. Since, research on agent co-operation was problem-oriented or domainspecific, there is still a wide gap between the various existing software agent models. The lack of communication standards prevents from effective agent co-operation. In this work we present the first results of an ongoing research that aimed at defining a formal language for agent communication and experimenting with it in a prototype, with the goal to identify general properties of an agent communication language. These properties than can serve as a basis for related standards. We present our work first by discussing the status quo of software agents in short and by referring to related technologies, such as distributed objects. Thereafter, general agent architecture, agent properties, common agent types, and agent communication languages are analysed. We introduce the agent communication language AgentCom and present its experimental utilisation in the prototype CourseMan, which is responsible for managing courses in a distributed environment. Through learning by observation of sample transactions, we present how the language semantics of AgentCom can be improved in CourseMan. Finally, general properties of agent communication languages and distributed objects are compared with each other. * This paper was published at ISCIS'98.

International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems, 2005., 2000

Automata-based approach, proposed for the programming of the virtual autonomous reactive agents control systems used in the famous "Robocode" game is extended in this paper to the creation of the control systems of the reactive multi-agent real-life environment agents. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach by the example of creation of transportation system, which consists of two interacting robots and is assembled from the famous "Lego Mindstorms" kit. The advantage of this approach is the formalization of the implementation process and the simplification of testing and modification.