Late Bindings in AgentSpeak(L)

BDI Agents, Planning, Agent Interpretation, AgentSpeak(L)

For agents based on BDI theory, some problems remain open. These include parts of the interpretation of these systems that are nondeterministic in the original specifications, and finding methods for their determinism should lead to improved rationality of agent behaviour. These problems include the choice of a plan suitable for achieving the goal, then the choice of the intention to be pursued by the agent at any given time, and if a language based on predicate logic is used to implement such an agent, then there is also the problem of choosing variable substitutions. One such agent-based system is systems using the AgentSpeak(L) language, which is be the basis for this paper.  We introduce late binding into the interpretation of this language and show that they do not make the agent lose the possibility of achieving the goal by making unnecessary or incorrect substitutions in cases where such a decision is not necessary. We show that with late binding substitutions the agent operates with all possible substitutions given by the chosen plan to the goals in the plan structure, and that these substitutions are always valid with respect to the acts performed so far within this plan.

The text introduces the use of late bindings to interpret AgentSpeak(L). In addition to the basic operations, operational semantics are presented, which can be used to create an interpreter that will execute an agent according to a program in this language in a more flexible way.