Agent Capabilities: Extending BDI Theory

Intentional agent systems are increasingly being used in a wide range of complex applications. Capabilities has recently been introduced into one of these systems as a software engineering mechanism to support modularity and reusability while still allowing meta-level reasoning. This paper presents a formalisation of capabilities within the framework of beliefs, goals and intentions and indicates how capabilities can affect agent reasoning about its intentions. We define a style of agent commitment which we refer to as a self-aware agent which allows an agent to modify its goals and intentions as its capabilities change. We also indicate which aspects of the specification of a BDI interpreter are affected by the introduction of capabilities and give some indications of additional reasoning which could be incorporated into an agent system on the basis of both the theoretical analysis and the existing implementation.

Authors

• Lin Padgham RMIT University; Patrick Lambrix

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