Conclusions

Abstract

We have identified the problem of maintaining logical dependencies as a problem that is typical in the pede domain. We have analyzed dependency maintenance both in the single agent and the multiagent case in reasonable depth and provided the two logics HPL and FHPL, which allow to formalize and reason about these problems. Furthermore, the logics open the way for providing computational support for handling these problems. We have provided formal specifications for the functionality desirable for such support systems and provided an architecture for implementing such systems. Finally, we designed and implemented the two systems xfrms (for the single agent scenario) and mxfrms (for the multiagent scenario), which provide the desired kind of functionality. With these two systems, we could demonstrate that it is possible to maintain multiple contexts with great efficiency.

A lot of work remains to be done in order to yield systems that are suitable components for building flexible, distributed pede applications, but we have provided a solid stepping stone and a technological key component for getting in this direction.