A major challenge in the field of Multi-Agent Systems is to enable autonomous agents to allocate tasks efficiently. This paper extends previous work on an approach to the collective iterative allocation problem where a group of agents endeavours to f

The study of computational agents capable of rational behaviour has received increasing attention in recent years. A number of theoretical formalizations for such multi-agent systems have been proposed. However, most of these formalizations do not have a strong semantic basis nor a sound and complete axiomatization. Hence, it has not been clear as to how these formalizations could assist in building agents in practice. This paper explores a particular type of multi-agent system, in which each agent is viewed as having the three mental attitudes of belief (B), desire (D), and intention (I). It provides a family of multi-modal branching-time BDI logics with a possible-worlds semantics, categorizes them, provides sound and complete axiomatizations, and gives constructive tableau-based decision procedures for testing the satisfiability and validity of formulas. The computational complexity of these decision procedures is no greater than the complexity of their underlying temporal logic component.

Editorial Get access MICHAEL GEORGEFF MICHAEL GEORGEFF Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Logic and Computation, Volume 4, Issue 5, October 1994, Pages 463–465, https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/4.5.463 Published: 01 October 1994

The aim of this paper is to provide a basis for a theory of events and systems of events that can be used for reasoning about arbitrarily complex dynamic domains involving multiple agents. The approach is based on a model of events that explicitly represents the domain of influence of each event. By restricting the scope of an event's domain of influence, most of the problems that have seriously troubled the more conventional state-transition models of events can be avoided. The effect of performing events, either in isolation or in parallel with other events, is described. A formalism is developed that allows the reasoning about arbitrarily complex behaviours. It is shown how this formalism avoids the frame problem yet allows the ramifications of any given event occurrence to be modelled without the introduction of non-monotonic mechanisms. Finally, the notion of system is introduced to provide a compositional means for reasoning about complex domains

This paper discusses the resources needed to establish and maintain a viable university computer science department. The aim is to bring together in a systematic way various material that has appeared in diverse reports, papers and committee recommendations. Particular attention is paid to academic staff numbers, working environment for academic staff, levels of support staff and equipment requirements to meet teaching and research commitments.

Much of commonsense knowledge about the real world is in the form of procedures or sequences of actions for achieving particular goals. In this paper, a formalism is presented for representing such knowledge using the notion of process. A declarative semantics for the representation is given, which allows a user to state facts about the effects of doing things in the problem domain of interest. An operational semantics is also provided, which shows how this knowledge can be used to achieve particular goals or to form intentions regarding their achievement. Given both semantics, our formalism additionally serves as an executable specification language suitable for constructing complex systems. A system based on this formalism is described, and examples involving control of an autonomous robot and fault diagnosis for NASA's space shuttle are provided.

A scheme is described that allows languages supporting higher order functions to be efficiently implemented using a standard run-time stack.A machine for evaluating typed lambda expressions is first constructed.In essence, the machine simply extends the standard SECD machine to allow partial application of abstractions representing multiadic functions.Some transformations of these typed lambda expressions into a so-called simple form are then described.Evaluation of simple-form expressions on the extended SECD machine produces stacklike environment structures rather than the treelike structures produced by expressions of arbitrary form.This allows implementation of the machine using a standard runtime stack.The SECD machine is then further modified so that closures are applied "in situ" rather than returned as values.The order of reduction is also changed so that the evaluation of function-valued expressions is deferred until they can be applied to sufficient arguments to allow reduction to nonfunctional values.It is shown that this function-deferring machine can be implemented using a standard run-time stack and thus can evaluate arbitrary lambda expressions without prior transformation to simple form.Finally, application of the above schemes to standard programming languages, such as ALGOL, Pascal, Ada, and LISP, is considered.