Author(s): Alvaro F. Moreira, Renata Vieira, Rafael H. Bordini, and Jomi Hübner
Title: Agent-Oriented Programming with Underlying Ontological Reasoning
Abstract: Developing applications that make use of machine-readable knowledge sources as promised by the Semantic Web vision is attracting much of current research interest; this vision is also affecting important trends in Computer Science such as Grid and Mobile computing. In this paper we propose a version of the BDI agent-oriented programming language AgentSpeak that is based on Description Logic (DL). In this approach, the belief base of an agent contains the definition of complex concepts, besides specific factual knowledge. The advantages of combining AgentSpeak with DL are: (i) queries to the belief base are more expressive as their result do not rely only on explicit knowledge but can be inferred from the ontology; (ii) the notion of belief update is refined since the consistence of a belief addition can be checked; (iii) the search for a plan for handling an event is more flexible as it is not based solely on unification but on the subsumption relation between concepts; and (iv) agents may share knowledge by using ontology languages such as the Ontology Web Language (OWL). Extending agent programming languages with DL can have a significant impact on the development of multi-agent systems for the Semantic Web technology.
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Thursday, 19-May-2005 20:56:48 CEST