Intelligent Agents VII Agent Theories Architectures and Languages: 7th International Workshop, ATAL 2000 Boston, MA, USA, July 7–9, 2000 Proceedings

Michael Wooldridge, Paul E. Dunne (auth.), Cristiano Castelfranchi, Yves Lespérance (eds.)3540424229, 9783540424222

Intelligent agents are one of the most important developments in computer science of the past decade. Agents are of interest in many important application areas, ranging from human-computer interaction to industrial process control. The ATAL workshop series aims to bring together researchers interested in the core/micro aspects of agent technology. Speci?cally, ATAL addresses issues such as theories of agency, software architectures for intelligent agents, methodologies and programming languages for r- lizing agents, and software tools for applying and evaluating agent systems. One of the strengthsoftheATALworkshopseriesisitsemphasisonthesynergiesbetweentheories, languages, architectures, infrastructures, methodologies, and formal methods. This year s workshop continued the ATAL trend of attracting a large number of high quality submissions. In more detail, 71 papers were submitted to the ATAL 2000 workshop, from 21 countries. After stringent reviewing, 22 papers were accepted for publication and appear in these proceedings. As with previous workshops in the series, we chose to emphasize what we perceive asimportantnewthemesinagentresearch. Thisyear sthemeswerebothassociatedwith the fact that the technology of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems is beginning to migrate from research labs to software engineering centers. As agents are deployed in applications such as electronic commerce, and start to take over responsibilities for their human users, techniques for controlling their autonomy become crucial. As well, the availability of tools that facilitate the design and implementation of agent systems becomes an important factor in how rapidly the technology will achieve widespread use.

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Table of contents :
Optimistic and Disjunctive Agent Design Problems….Pages 1-14
Updating Mental States from Communication….Pages 15-30
Sensing Actions, Time, and Concurrency in the Situation Calculus….Pages 31-45
Developing Multiagent Systems with agentTool….Pages 46-60
Layered Disclosure: Revealing Agents’ Internals….Pages 61-72
Architectures and Idioms: Making Progress in Agent Design….Pages 73-88
Developing Multi-agent Systems with JADE….Pages 89-103
High-Level Robot Control through Logic….Pages 104-121
Determining the Envelope of Emergent Agent Behaviour via Architectural Transformation….Pages 122-135
Delegation and Responsibility….Pages 136-149
Agent Theory for Team Formation by Dialogue….Pages 150-166
Task Coordination Paradigms for Information Agents….Pages 167-181
Plan Analysis for Autonomous Sociological Agents….Pages 182-197
Multiagent Bidding Mechanisms for Robot Qualitative Navigation….Pages 198-212
Performance of Coordinating Concurrent Hierarchical Planning Agents Using Summary Information….Pages 213-227
Agent Programming with Declarative Goals….Pages 228-243
Modeling Multiagent Systems with CASL – A Feature Interaction Resolution Application….Pages 244-259
Generalised Object-Oriented Concepts for Inter-agent Communication….Pages 260-274
Specification of Heterogeneous Agent Architectures….Pages 275-289
Improving Choice Mechanisms within the BVG Architecture….Pages 290-304
Planning-Task Transformations for Soft Deadlines….Pages 305-319
An Architectural Framework for Integrated Multiagent Planning, Reacting, and Learning….Pages 320-330
Panel Summary: Agent Development Tools….Pages 331-338
Again on Agents’ Autonomy: A Homage to AlanTuring — Panel Chair’s Statement….Pages 339-342
Autonomy as Decision-Making Control….Pages 343-345
Autonomy: Theory, Dimensions, and Regulation….Pages 346-348
Situated Autonomy….Pages 349-350
Autonomy: A Nice Idea in Theory….Pages 351-353
Adjustable Autonomy: A Response….Pages 354-356