Executing Specifications of Social Reasoning Agents

Abstract

Social reasoning theories, whilst studied extensively in the area of multiagent systems, are hard to implement directly in agents. They often specify properties of beliefs or behaviours but not the way these should affect the computational reasoning mechanisms of a concrete agent design. The Expectation-Strategy-Behaviour (ESB) framework addresses this problem by separating and abstracting social reasoning from other practical reasoning, providing the computational machinery that is necessary to perform social reasoning in practice. We present an extension to previous work on ESB to an implemented reasoning system which enables the execution of concise and modular declarative social reasoning rules. We review the foundations of the abstract ESB framework and present the implementation of a reasoner based on CTL model checking. Our system allows for conditioning agent behaviours on complex preconditions and verification of properties to aid the agent designer. It also allows for easy integration with a BDI reasoning system. We exemplify the suitability of ESB for social reasoning constructs with a detailed example of Joint Intention theory in ESB and illustrate the generality with an overview of another implemented social reasoning scheme, and extensions to both.