Agent Programming with Declarative Goals

TL;DR

This paper introduces GOAL, a new agent programming language that incorporates declarative goals, bridging the gap between agent logics and programming frameworks, and providing both a semantics and proof theory.

Contribution

The paper presents GOAL, a novel agent programming language with declarative goals, and develops a complete theoretical framework including semantics and proof theory.

Findings

Successfully formalized GOAL's semantics using commitment strategies

Proved correctness of an example GOAL program

Established a complete theory linking agent logics and programming

Abstract

A long and lasting problem in agent research has been to close the gap between agent logics and agent programming frameworks. The main reason for this problem of establishing a link between agent logics and agent programming frameworks is identified and explained by the fact that agent programming frameworks have not incorporated the concept of a `declarative goal'. Instead, such frameworks have focused mainly on plans or `goals-to-do' instead of the end goals to be realised which are also called `goals-to-be'. In this paper, a new programming language called GOAL is introduced which incorporates such declarative goals. The notion of a `commitment strategy' - one of the main theoretical insights due to agent logics, which explains the relation between beliefs and goals - is used to construct a computational semantics for GOAL. Finally, a proof theory for proving properties of GOAL agents is introduced. Thus, we offer a complete theory of agent programming in the sense that our theory provides both for a programming framework and a programming logic for such agents. An example program is proven correct by using this programming logic.