Agent programming languages: programming with mental models
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, (2001)SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2001-2.Abstract
Intelligent Agents are personal assistants which can provide proactive
support to users by executing routine activities like searching on
the Internet, the scheduling of meetings, etc. The concept of an
Intelligent Agent has its roots in Artificial Intelligence and provides
a basis for the construction of a new programming paradigm. A programm
is being viewed within this paradigma as a pro-active agent that
has specific knowledge to achieve its tasks, is goal-directed, is
able to construct appropriate plans and possesses the capabilities
to execute those plans. Unfortunately, the construction and the design
of Intelligent Agents is ad-hoc and proceeds without a proper theoretical
basis. In this thesis, a more structured approach is proposed that
provides a programming framework to develop agents. More specific,
we design two programming languages that are specifically targeted
at the construction of intelligent agents. The basic agent concepts
like knowledge, goals, plans and capabilities provide the basis for
the language 3APL. One of the unique features of 3APL agents is that
they are able to modify and revise their plan. 3APL agents thus are
able to modify themselves and can be viewed as self-modifying programs.
The noition of a goal in 3APL has an operationel meaning and is very
similar to a plan or procedure that the agent knows how to execute.
In the agent language called GOAL (goal-oriented agent language),
a more descriptive notion of a goal is incorporated. A goal in this
second agent language denotes the state of affairs that the agent
wants to achieve. The power of both of the agent langauges developed
in the thesis consists in the fact that the basic programming concepts
are natural and intuitive, and therefore provide a basis to bridge
the gap between our common-sense way of thinking and the way in which
software engineers develop programs.
