Agents via Mixed mode Computation in Linear Logic
James Harland
Computer Science and Information Technology
RMIT Univeristy
9-30am - 11am,
Room 2.16 (level 2 staff tea room)
SEECS Building,
221 Bouverie St.
The University of Melbourne
Carlton
Abstract:
Agent systems based on the Belief, Desire and Intention model of Rao
and Georgeff have been used for a number of successful
applications. However, it is often difficult to learn how to apply
such systems, due to the complexity of both the semantics of the
system and the computational model. In addition, there is a gap
between the semantics and the concepts that are presented to the
programmer. In this talk we address these issues by re-casting the
foundations of such systems into a logic programming framework. In
particular we show how the integration of backward- and
forward-chaining techniques for linear logic provides a natural
starting point for this investigation. We discuss how the integrated
system provides for the interaction between the proactive and reactive
parts of the system, and we discuss several aspects of this
interaction. In particular, one perhaps surprising outcome is that
goals and plans may be thought of as declarative and procedural
aspects of the same concept. We also discuss the language design
issues for such a system, and particularly the way in which the
potential choices for rule evaluation in a forward-chaining manner is
crucial to the behaviour of the system.
Biosketch:
James Harland is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science
and Information Technology at RMIT.