Multi-Agent System Research Map

Internal Concepts of Rationality

Agents are autonomous entities that act on their own responsibility. To enable agents that are capable of rational behaviour several different approaches exist that try to describe the internal agent structure. In contrast to the different architectures here the different kinds for rationality with mentalistic concepts are outlined. Rational agents describe agents that exhibit rational behaviour, what means that they have to choose actions that comply to their objectives. These kinds of agents are conceived by making use of concepts for representing a mental state. There exist three well-known approaches, that utilize slightly differnt concepts. Agent Oriented Programming (AOP) [Sho93] was the first proposal for a pure agent language based on mental states like commitments, beliefs and capabilities. The belief-desire-intention (BDI) paradigm is based on the early philosophical work of Bratmans rational action theory and was transferred to the field of computer science by Rao and Georgeff [RG95]. The latest approach is called 3APL (agent programming language) and differs from the others in that it claims to allow goal deliberation [Hin99].

[Sho93]	Agent-oriented programming. Artificial Intelligence, 60(1):51--92, March 1993.
[RG95]	A. S. Rao, M. P. Georgeff. BDI-agents: from theory to practice. Proceedings of the First Intl. Conference on Multiagent Systems, San Francisco, 1995.
[Hin99]	K. V. Hindriks, F. S. De Boer, W. Van der Hoek, J.-J. C. Meyer. Agent Programming in 3APL. Journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. Volume 2. Kluwer Academic publishers. N. Jennings, K. Sycara, M. Georgeff. PP. 357-401. 1999.