Computational logic-based agents

Abstract

Computational logic provides a rigorous framework for designing, specifying, implementing and verifying autonomous agents that interact, communicate with one another and coordinate their activities in multi-agent systems and societies. In particular, computational logic can aid formalizing reasoning with agents’ mental attitudes such as beliefs, desires, intentions and goals, and agents’ social attitudes such as protocols, social commitments, obligations, norms and rules of behaviour. The use of computational logic aims at facilitating the development of agents that reason and act rationally while at the same time being able to verify the behaviour of these agents against their specification. In the last decade, computational logic-based agents have gained popularity and many contributions have been made in this field both from a theoretical and a practical viewpoint. Computational logic has been used to provide powerful techniques and tools to address a number of issues in multi-agent systems, ranging from agent communication, to agent programming languages, to argumentation, to decision making in a single and multi-agent context, to applying model checking for verifying agent systems. The further development and integration of these techniques and tools shows promise for playing a fundamental role in developing powerful and verifiable agent-based systems. This special issue is about using computational logic to deal with some key issues in multi-agent systems. The purpose is to report on recent developments in this area and discuss current challenges, limits, and future research opportunities. The problems discussed range from agent programming languages through a BDI agent-based programming language, to agent communication through a multi-issue bilateral negotiation, to logic programming-based agents realising a distributed abductive inference mechanism, to mental attitudes representation through a theory of intention representation, and automated, nondeterministic planning for extended reachability goals in agents.