Singh, Munindar P.; 1991. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland. 127--145.  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....of agents. Therefore, in order to formalize the above definitions, we need to introduce two derived modal operators that express the notions of single agent ability and multi agent ability. There is currently no consensus in the literature about the most appropriate definition of ability (e.g. [76]) Rather than defining ability as a primitive modal operator, here we follow Wooldridge and Jennings [88] in adopting a definition that was originally proposed by Moore [64] DEFINITION 5.3 (Single agent ability) Agent a i can (has the ability to) achieve a state iff there is some action ....

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Decentralized AI-2, Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi- Agent World (MAAMAW-91), Y. Demazeau and J. P. Mueller, eds. pp. 57--76. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 1991.

....into a formal definition (see discussion below) Whenever an agent is required expected to establish cooperation, this requirement expectation brings about social dependence between two or more agents. In what follows, we will model this nonnative aspect of social dependence by 34 (e.g. [76]) Rather than defining ability as a primitive modal operator, here we follow Wooldridge and Jennings [88] in adopting a definition that was originally proposed by Moore [64] Definition: Single agent Ability) Agent ai Can (has the ability to) achieve a state 0 iff there is some action sequence ....

M.P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J.P. Mueller, editors, Decentralized AI-2, Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a MultiAgent World (MAAMAW-91), Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., pages 57-76, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1991.

....of agents. Therefore, in order to formalize the above definitions, we need to introduce two derived modal operators that express the notions of single agent ability and multi agent ability. There is currently no consensus in the literature about the most appropriate definition of ability (e.g. [76]) Rather than defining ability as a primitive modal operator, here we follow Wooldridge and Jennings [88] in adopting a definition that was originally proposed by Moore [64] DEFINITION 5.3 (Single agent ability) # can (has the ability to) achieve a state # iff there is some action sequence # # ....

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Decentralized AI-2, Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi- Agent World (MAAMAW-91), Y. Demazeau and J. P. Mueller, eds. pp. 57--76. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 1991.

....organizational adaptation employ some form of dynamic participation mechanism. In these systems, agent interaction within a group can be modeled as the fulfillment of certain roles in the domain (e.g. in the football domain there are roles including quarterback, receiver, and blocker) (Singh, 1990). Organizational adaptation occurs as agents move in and out of these pre defined roles (Decker and Sycara, 1997; Glaser and Morignot, 1997; Tambe, 1997) When an agent failure is detected, another agent is substituted, if possible, into the failed role. Though the roles that individual agents ....

Singh, M. P. 1990. Group Ability and Structure. In Decentralized A.I. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agents World, 127-145. Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, France: Elsevier Science.

....manner in which the agents cooperate, or interact socially is determined by the organizational structure of the agent based system. Organizational structure has been the subject of much research over the past few decades (Chandrasekaran, 1981; Fox, 1981; Kirn, 1996; Nirenburg and Lesser, 1986; Singh, 1990; Smith, 1980; Werner and Demazeau, 1991; Wesson et al. 1981) The flexibility and responsiveness of the system to new situation in complex and dynamic domains is aided by adaptation mechanisms that 7 can change the organizational structures among agents or the problem solving mechanisms within ....

Singh, M. P. 1990. Group Ability and Structure. In Proceedings of the Decentralized A.I. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agents World, 127-145. Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, France: Elsevier Science.

....adaptation employ some type of dynamic role filling mechanism. Agent interaction within a problem solving environment can be modeled as the fulfillment of certain domain specific roles [22, 33, 41] e.g. in the American football domain, roles include quarterback, receiver, and blocker [40]) A role specifies domain specific tasks an agent takes on. Static organizations can be dynamically reconfigured by allowing agents to dynamically assume one or more different pre defined roles during system operation [41] For example, the RETSINA agent approach uses middle agents to help ....

M. P. Singh, "Group Ability and Structure," in Proc. Decentralized A.I. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agents World , SaintQuentin en Yvelines, France, 1990, pp. 127-45.

.... WORK The organizational structure of agent based systems, which provides the mechanism through which agents coordinate or cooperate to achieve system goals, has been the subject of much research over the past few decades (Chandrasekaran, 1981; Fox, 1981; Kirn, 1996; Nirenburg and Lesser, 1986; Singh, 1990; Smith, 1980; Werner and Demazeau, 1991; Wesson et al. 1981) Although these studies have shed much light on agent behavior under different problem solving frameworks, a formal description of generalized (high level, application independent) agent problem solving interaction is lacking. Such a ....

.... structure have been proposed for both self organizing and statically organized agentbased systems, most such representations rely on application specific definitions of agent capabilities or functional system roles (Barbuceanu et al. 1998; Glaser and Morignot, 1997; Pattison et al. 1987; Singh, 1990). Others represent organizations as a derivative of the end product of agent problem 4 solving (i.e. the collection of ordered, dependent sets of tasks or actions in a plan or process) in addition to a collection of agent beliefs about such actions (Gasser et al. 1989) However, these ....

Singh, M. P. 1990. Group Ability and Structure. In Proceedings of the Decentralized A.I. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a MultiAgent World, 127-145. Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, France: Elsevier Science.

.... Work The organizational structure of agent based systems, which provides the mechanism through which agents coordinate or cooperate to achieve system goals, has been the subject of much research over the past few decades (Chandrasekaran, 1981; Fox, 1981; Kirn, 1996; Nirenburg and Lesser, 1986; Singh, 1990; Smith, 1980; Werner and Demazeau, 1991; Wesson et al. 1981) One overall goal of multi agent systems research is adaptive selfconfiguration: allowing agents to reason about and change the organization of their coordination frameworks (Gasser, 1988) Most self organizing systems rely on ....

Singh, M. P. 1990. Group Ability and Structure. In Decentralized A.I. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a MultiAgent World, Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., Eds. SaintQuentin en Yvelines, France: Elsevier Science, 127-145.

.... to their formalism (Rao and Georgeff, 1992; Kinny et al. 1992) Singh A quite different approach to modelling agents was taken by Singh, who has developed an interesting family of logics for representing intentions, beliefs, knowledge, know how, and communication in a branching time framework (Singh, 1990; Singh, 1991a; Singh and Asher, 1991; Singh, 1991b) these articles are collected and expanded in (Singh, 1994) Singh s formalism is extremely rich, and considerable effort has been devoted to establishing its properties. However, its complexity prevents a detailed discussion here. Werner In ....

Singh, M. P. (1991a). Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized AI 2 --- Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Worlds (MAAMAW-90), pages 127--146. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

.... potential for adding (social) plans to their formalism [106, 77] Singh A quite different approach to modelling agents was taken by Singh, who has developed an interesting family of logics for representing intentions, beliefs, knowledge, know how, and communication in a branching time framework [123, 124, 127, 125]. The model of intentions and beliefs is based on AsherKamp Discourse Representation Theory. Singh s formalism is extremely rich, and considerable effort has been devoted to establishing its properties. However, its complexity prevents a detailed discussion here. Werner In an extensive sequence ....

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J.-P. Muller, editors, Decentralized AI 2 --- Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Worlds (MAAMAW-90), pages 127--146. Elsevier/North Holland, 1991.

....the intentions of other agents. Werner concentrates on communication and cooperation in multi agent systems [127, 126, 128, 129] From a formal theory of intention, he develops a theory of communication based on speech acts and finally cooperation and social structure. The work done by Singh [110, 111, 112, 113] is an attempt to provide a comprehensive formal basis for multi agent systems. Agents are described as intelligent, intentional entities. Formalizations are provided for concurrent actions, intentions and know how and communications. Singh defines know how as the knowledge of how to act, or the ....

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J.-P. Muller, editors, Decentralized AI 2 --- Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World (MAAMAW-90), pages 127--146. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1991.

....Volmac, CERN and Univ. of Porto. lence is not assumed [6] 23] However merely having a common objective is not sufficient for realising a collective goal agents also need to agree upon a means of reaching the target state. Previous work on collaborative problem solving [11] 16] 17] [18], 20] has concentrated on defining joint intentionality in terms of goal states, without consideration of how goals can be achieved (plan states) or how participants should behave when engaged in collaborative problem solving. The fundamental notion behind our work is that any comprehensive ....

M.P.Singh, (1990), "Group Ability and Structure" Proc. MAAMAW 1990, France.

....using a meta language predicate, and given 7 Note, however, that the sentence (2.5) is itself a proposition, in that its denotation is the value true or false. MODAL LANGUAGE METALANGUAGE POSSIBLE WORLDS ungrounded [87] 52] 29] 83] grounded [142] 143] 58] 105] 53] 124] OTHER [100] [153] [121] 98] 125] 35] Table 2.1: Some Intentional Logics whatever axiomatization is deemed appropriate. Both of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, and will be discussed at length in the sequel. As with the syntactic problem, there are two basic approaches to the semantic ....

....section, we examine four formalisms for reasoning about intentional notions that do not fit neatly into any of the categories described above. First, Konolige s deduction model of belief is examined in detail [100] Werner s formalism [179] situation semantics [14] 41] and Singh s formalism [153] are then briefly described. 2.5.1 The Deduction Model of Belief In Konolige s 1982 first order formalization of knowledge and action, described above, an agent s beliefs were modelled as a set of formulae and a provability relation. Motivated by some shortcomings of this formalism (see above) ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J.-P. Muller, editors, Decentralized AI 2 --- Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Worlds (MAAMAW-90), pages 127--146. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1991.

....action, it is necessary to introduce a number of subsidiary definitions. First, we require definitions of single and multi agent ability: what it means to be able to bring about some state of the world. Several attempts to define multi agent ability have appeared in the literature (e.g. [14]) However, there is currently no consensus on the appropriateness of these definitions. For this reason, we adapt the well known model of ability proposed by Moore [11] Definition: Single agent ability) Agent i can achieve j iff there is some possibly complex action a of which i is the sole ....

M. P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J. P. Muller, editors, Decentralized AI 2 --- Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Worlds (MAAMAW-90). Elsevier/North Holland, 1991.

No context found.

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland. 127--145.

....their actions. These subareas include autonomous agents, multiagent planning and action, discourse understanding, and cooperative work [6, 7, 13, 16, 18] In recent work, I have developed a formal theory of the ability of a group (as ascribed objectively) that accounts for its internal structure [24] and, with Nicholas Asher, a theory of intentions [26] Here I plan to relate these interests, and motivate and present a formal theory of the intentions of a group of agents. This theory is meant to apply to groups of agents of a wide range of representational and reasoning capabilities: on one ....

....and is implicitly reduced to further psychological notions. Briefly, in this paper, the intentions of a group are described in terms of its internal structure, and the abstract strategy it may be said to be following. This strategy is itself seen as a set of strategies of its members. Following [24], the structure of a group is captured in terms of the strategic and reactive interactions of its members as they follow their respective strategies. As a consequence, this theory, unlike [6, 13] does not require mutual beliefs among the members of a group. Mutual beliefs are impossible to ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Munindar P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In 2nd European Workshop on the Modeling of Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, August 1990.

....the qualitative approaches discussed above. Another set of issues is opened up when we turn our attention to multiagent settings. If the agents can cooperate with each other, they can together achieve more than any of them can individually. There has been some work on this problem, for example, [32], but additional research is needed to relate the know how of agents with the structures of the organizations in which they exist. The foregoing should have made it clear that there are considerable overlaps and similarities between approaches to rational agency in computer science and ....

Munindar P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In [10], pages 127--145. 1991.

No context found.

Munindar P. Singh. Group ability and structure. In Y. Demazeau and J.-P. Muller, editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland, 1991.

No context found.

Singh, Munindar P. 1991a. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland.

....distinguishes implicit and explicit commitments, and models social policies as higher order commitments. To help appreciate our approach, we first lay out our main conceptual assumptions: A1. Agents can be structured, and are recursively composed of heterogeneous individuals or groups of agents (Singh, 1991a) A2. Agents are autonomous, but constrained by commitments or we would have chaos A3. Social commitments cannot be reduced to internal commitments, which apply within an agent the relationships among these concepts cannot be definitional (Singh, 1991b) A4. Commitments are, in general, ....

....individuals or groups of agents (Singh, 1991a) A2. Agents are autonomous, but constrained by commitments or we would have chaos A3. Social commitments cannot be reduced to internal commitments, which apply within an agent the relationships among these concepts cannot be definitional (Singh, 1991b) A4. Commitments are, in general, revocable; the clauses for revoking them are as important as the conditions for satisfying them. A5. Commitments arise, exist, are satisfied, revoked, or otherwise manipulated, all in a social context. A6. Commitments not only rely on the social structure of ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991a. Group ability and structure. In (Demazeau & Muller, 1991). 127--145.

No context found.

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991a. Group ability and structure.

....1990; Georgeff, 1987; Grosz Sidner, 1990; Hewitt, 1988; Konolige, 1982; Singh, 1991c] It is convenient to refer to multiagent systems as groups. In recent work, I have developed a formal theory of the ability of a group (as ascribed objectively to it) that accounts for its internal structure [Singh, 1991a] Here I plan to extend and modify those ideas and motivate a formal theory of the intentions of a group of agents. This theory is meant to apply to groups of agents with a wide range of representational and reasoning capabilities: on one extreme these agents may not be able to reason explicitly ....

....and a catcher from a pitcher in a baseball team. The strategy of a group describes what it is doing. This strategy is itself seen as the set of strategies of its members. The structure of a group is captured in terms of the interactions of its members as they follow their respective strategies [Singh, 1991a] As a consequence, this theory, unlike those of Grosz and Sidner [1990] and Cohen and Levesque [1988] does not require mutual beliefs among the members of a group. This is important because mutual beliefs are impossible to achieve in most realistic scenarios, e.g. where communication delay ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991a. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland. 127--145.

....abstractions from the above works. Some previous research has related communications to the agents internal specifications [McCarthy, 1991; Singh, 1994] but not to the extent necessary to define and enact reusable patterns of interactions. Formal research on interactions among agents includes [Singh, 1991; Haddadi, 1995] Other highly valuable work on coordination includes [Decker Lesser, 1995; von Martial, 1992] which however is not formal. Rosenschein Zlotkin, 1994] develop powerful game theoretic approaches for negotiations among agents. We see the above research as complementary to the ....

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland. 127--145.

....primitive of self is added. 3 Commitments and Structure Commitments have an intimate relationship with the structure of multiagent systems. Although it is obvious that multiagent systems are structured, relatively few theories can actually accommodate it. We have identified two principles in [Singh, 1991a] that are relevant here. ffl Heterogeneity. Systems are composed of a diverse mix of agents and other systems; the members may have different knowledge, know how, intentions, etc. In some cases, they may not be aware of each others existence, or know each others names. ffl Monolithicity. ....

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991a. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam, Holland. 127--145.

....between the interacting computations. Agents give us a handle on persistent activity, but without commitments they are quite limited. In order to formalize commitments, we observe that 1. agents can be structured, and are recursively composed of heterogeneous individuals or groups of agents [ Singh, 1991 ] 2. agents are autonomous, but constrained by commitments or we would have chaos 3. social commitments cannot be reduced to internal commitments, which apply within an agent the relationships among these concepts cannot be definitional 4. commitments are, in general, revocable; the ....

Singh, Munindar P.; 1991. Group ability and structure. In Demazeau, Y. and Muller, J.-P., editors, Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2. Elsevier Science B.V. / North-Holland, Amsterdam. 127--145.

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