Goals in agent systems: a unifying framework

In the literature on agent systems, the proactive behavior of agents is often modeled in terms of goals that the agents pursue. We review a number of commonly-used existing goal types and propose a simple and general definition of goal, which unifies these goal types. We then give a formal and generic operationalization of defining an abstract goal architecture, which describes the adoption, pursuit, and dropping of goals in a generic way. This operationalization is used to characterize the discussed goal types. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.11 [Artificial Intelligence]: Distributed Artificial Intelligence-Intelligent agents, languages and structures; I.2.5 [Artificial Intelligence]: Programming Languages and Software; F.3.3 [Logics and Meaning of Programs]: Studies of Program Constructs; D.3.3 [Programming Languages]: Language Constructs and Features General Terms Theory, Languages Keywords Agent Programming, Goals, Formal Semantics

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: M. Birna van Riemsdijk, Mehdi Dastani, Michael Winikoff
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, ATAL 2008, Commonly-used Existing Goal, Goal Types, Intelligent Agents