Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming

A key advantage of BDI-based agent programming is that agents can deliberate about which course of action to adopt to achieve a goal or respond to an event. However while state-of-the-art BDI-based agent programming languages provide flexible support for expressing plans, they are typically limited...

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Main Author: Doan, Thu Trang
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2014
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29286/
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author Doan, Thu Trang
author_facet Doan, Thu Trang
author_sort Doan, Thu Trang
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description A key advantage of BDI-based agent programming is that agents can deliberate about which course of action to adopt to achieve a goal or respond to an event. However while state-of-the-art BDI-based agent programming languages provide flexible support for expressing plans, they are typically limited to a single, hard-coded, deliberation strategy(perhaps with some parameterisation) for all task environments. In this thesis, we describe a novel agent programming language, meta-APL, that allows both agent programs and the agent’s deliberation strategy to be encoded in the same programming language. Key steps in the execution cycle of meta-APL are reflected in the state of the agent and can be queried and updated by meta-APL rules, allowing a wide range of BDI deliberation strategies to be programmed. We give the syntax and the operational semantics of meta-APL, focussing on the connections between the agent’s state and its implementation. Finally, to illustrate the flexibility of meta-APL, we show how Jason and 3APL programs and deliberation strategy can be translated into meta-APL to give equivalent behaviour under weak bisimulation equivalence.
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spelling nottingham-292862025-02-28T11:35:49Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29286/ Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming Doan, Thu Trang A key advantage of BDI-based agent programming is that agents can deliberate about which course of action to adopt to achieve a goal or respond to an event. However while state-of-the-art BDI-based agent programming languages provide flexible support for expressing plans, they are typically limited to a single, hard-coded, deliberation strategy(perhaps with some parameterisation) for all task environments. In this thesis, we describe a novel agent programming language, meta-APL, that allows both agent programs and the agent’s deliberation strategy to be encoded in the same programming language. Key steps in the execution cycle of meta-APL are reflected in the state of the agent and can be queried and updated by meta-APL rules, allowing a wide range of BDI deliberation strategies to be programmed. We give the syntax and the operational semantics of meta-APL, focussing on the connections between the agent’s state and its implementation. Finally, to illustrate the flexibility of meta-APL, we show how Jason and 3APL programs and deliberation strategy can be translated into meta-APL to give equivalent behaviour under weak bisimulation equivalence. 2014-07-15 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29286/1/luan-van.pdf Doan, Thu Trang (2014) Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
spellingShingle Doan, Thu Trang
Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title_full Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title_fullStr Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title_full_unstemmed Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title_short Meta-APL: a general language for agent programming
title_sort meta-apl: a general language for agent programming
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29286/