Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What Does It Mean to Have an Architecture?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
From Animals to Robots and Back: Reflections on Hard Problems in the Study of Cognition

Part of the book series: Cognitive Systems Monographs ((COSMOS,volume 22))

  • 739 Accesses

Abstract

In this chapter, I propose an approach to architectures, which makes precise exactly what it means for an agent to ‘have’ an architecture, and allows us to establish properties of an agent expressed in terms of its architectural description. Using this approach, it is possible to verify whether two different agent programmes really have the same architecture or the same properties, allowing a more precise comparison of architectures and the agent programmes which implement them. I illustrate the approach with a number of examples which show both how to establish qualitative and quantitative properties of architectures and agent programmes, and how to establish whether a particular agent has a particular architecture. I focus on architectures of software agents, however, a similar approach can be applied to robots and other kinds of intelligent systems.

This chapter is a revised and extended version of a paper presented at the 2007 AAAI Workshop on Evaluating Architectures for Intelligence (Alechina and Logan 2007).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Although Russell and Norvig (2003) state that ‘agent \(=\) architecture \(+\) programme’, most of the book is about designing (components of) agent programmes, and there are only ten references to ‘architecture’ in nearly 1,000 pages.

  2. 2.

    Note that the transition systems are more general than operational semantics of the SimpleAPL architecture presented informally above, in that they do not describe a particular agent programme or execution strategy, but all possible basic transitions between all the beliefs and goal states of an agent.

  3. 3.

    Note that we use \(\Box \) rather than the more conventional \(G\) to avoid confusion with the goal operator.

References

  • Albore A, Alechina N, Bertoli P, Ghidini C, Logan B, Serafini L (2006) Model-checking memory requirements of resource-bounded reasoners. In: Proceedings of the twenty-first national conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI 2006), AAAI Press, pp 213–218

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B (2002) Ascribing beliefs to resource bounded agents. In: Proceedings of the first international joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (AAMAS 2002), vol 2. ACM Press, Bologna, pp 881–888

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B (2005) Verifying bounds on deliberation time in multi-agent systems. In: Gleizes MP, Kaminka G, Nowe A, Ossowski S, Tuyls K, Verbeeck K (eds) Proceedings of the third European workshop on multiagent systems (EUMAS’05). Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van Belgie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, Brussels, Belgium, pp 25–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B (2007) Formal evaluation of agent architectures. In: Kaminka GA, Burghart CR (eds) Evaluating architectures for intelligence: papers from the 2007 AAAI workshop, AAAI Press, technical report WS-07-04, pp 1–4

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B (2009) A logic of situated resource-bounded agents. J Logic Lang Inf 18(1): 79–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10849-008-9073-6

  • Alechina N, Logan B (2010) Belief ascription under bounded resources. Synthese 173(2):179–197. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9706-6

  • Alechina N, Logan B, Whitsey M (2004a) A complete and decidable logic for resource-bounded agents. In: Jennings NR, Sierra C, Sonenberg L, Tambe M (eds) Proceedings of the third international joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (AAMAS 2004), vol 2. ACM Press, New York, pp 606–613

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B, Whitsey M (2004b) Modelling communicating agents in timed reasoning logics. In: Alferes JJ, Leite J (eds) Proceedings of the ninth European conference on logics in artificial intelligence (JELIA 2004), Springer, Lisbon, no. 3229 in LNAI, pp 95–107

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Bertoli P, Ghidini C, Jago M, Logan B, Serafini L (2006a) Verifying space and time requirements for resource-bounded agents. In: Edelkamp S, Lomuscio A (eds) Proceedings of the fourth workshop on model checking and artificial intelligence (MoChArt-2006), pp 16–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Jago M, Logan B (2006b) Modal logics for communicating rule-based agents. In: Brewka G, Coradeschi S, Perini A, Traverso P (eds) Proceedings of the 17th European conference on artificial intelligence (ECAI 2006), IOS Press, pp 322–326

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Dastani M, Logan B, Meyer JJC (2007) A logic of agent programs. In: Proceedings of the twenty-second AAAI conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI 2007), AAAI Press, pp 795–800

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Dastani M, Logan B, Meyer JJC (2008a) Reasoning about agent deliberation. In: Brewka G, Lang J (eds) Proceedings of the eleventh international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR’08). AAAI, Sydney, Australia, pp 16–26

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Logan B, Nga NH, Rakib A (2008b) Verifying time, memory and communication bounds in systems of reasoning agents. In: Padgham L, Parkes D, Müller J, Parsons S (eds) Proceedings of the seventh international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (AAMAS 2008), vol 2. IFAAMAS, Estoril, Portugal, pp 736–743

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Dastani M, Logan B, Meyer JJC (2010a) Reasoning about agent deliberation. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 22(2):1–26. doi:10.1007/s10458-010-9129-2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10458-010-9129-2

  • Alechina N, Dastani M, Logan B, Meyer JJC (2010b) Using theorem proving to verify properties of agent programs. In: Dastani M, Hindriks KV, Meyer JJC (eds) Specification and verification of multi-agent systems, chap 2. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Alechina N, Dastani M, Logan B, Meyer JJC (2011) Reasoning about plan revision in BDI agent programs. Theoretical Computer Science. doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2011.05.052, (in press)

  • Anderson JR, Libiere C (1998) The atomic components of thought. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Lawrence

    Google Scholar 

  • Dastani M (2008) 2APL: a practical agent programming language. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 16(3):214–248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dastani M, Meyer JJC (2008) A practical agent programming language. In: Dastani M, El Fallah-Seghrouchni A, Ricci A, Winikoff M (eds) Proceedings of the fifth international workshop on programming multi-agent systems (ProMAS’07),vol 4908. Springer, LNCS, Berlin, pp 107–123

    Google Scholar 

  • Dastani M, van Riemsdijk MB, Dignum F, Meyer JJC (2004) A programming language for cognitive agents: goal directed 3APL. In: Dastani M, Dix J, El Fallah-Seghrouchni A (eds) Programming multi-agent systems, first international workshop, ProMAS 2003, Melbourne, Australia, July 15, 2003, Selected revised and invited papers, vol 3067. Springer, LNCS, pp 111–130. http://www.springerlink.com/content/l7dqkvqh5u941l4b

  • Dastani M, van Riemsdijk MB, Meyer JJC (2005) Programming multi-agent systems in 3APL. In: Bordini RH, Dastani M, Dix J, El Fallah-Seghrouchni A (eds) Multi-agent programming: languages, platforms and applications, multiagent systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations, vol 15. Springer, pp 39–67

    Google Scholar 

  • Doan TT, Logan B, Alechina N (2009) Verifying dribble agents. In: Baldoni M, Bentahar J, Lloyd J, van Riemsdijk MB (eds) Seventh international workshop on declarative agent languages and technologies (DALT 2009). Workshop Notes, Budapest Hungary, pp 162–177

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagin R, Halpern JY, Moses Y, Vardi MY (1995) Reasoning about knowledge. MIT Press, Cambridge

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer MJ, Ladner RE (1979) Propositional dynamic logic of regular programs. J Comput Syst Sci 18(2):194–211

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Georgeff MP, Pell B, Pollack ME, Tambe M, Wooldridge M (1999) The Belief-Desire-Intention model of agency. In: Müller JP, Singh MP, Rao AS (eds) Proceedings Intelligent agents V, agent theories, architectures, and languages, 5th international workshop, (ATAL’98), Paris, France, July 4–7, 1998, vol 1555. Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka J (1962) Knowledge and belief. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

    Google Scholar 

  • van der Hoek W, van Linder B, Meyer JJC (1999) An integrated modal approach to rational agents. In: Wooldridge M, Rao A (eds) Foundations of rational agency. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp 133–168

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell A (1990) Unified theories of cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Nilsson N (1998) Artificial intelligence: a new synthesis. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Perry DE, Wolf AL (1992) Foundations for the study of software architecture. SIGSOFT Softw Eng Notes 17:40–52. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/141874.141884

  • Rao AS, Georgeff MP (1991) Modeling rational agents within a BDI-architecture. In: Proceedings of the second international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR’91), pp 473–484

    Google Scholar 

  • Rao AS, Georgeff MP (1992) An abstract architecture for rational agents. In: Rich C, Swartout W, Nebel B (eds) Proceedings of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR&R-92), pp 439–449

    Google Scholar 

  • van Riemsdijk B, van der Hoek W, Meyer JJC (2003) Agent programming in Dribble: from beliefs to goals using plans. In: Proceedings of the second international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (AAMAS’03), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, pp 393–400. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/860575.860639

  • Russell S, Norvig P (2003) Artificial intelligence: a modern approach, 2nd edn. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw M, Clements P (2006) The golden age of software architecture. IEEE Softw 23:31–39. doi: 10.1109/MS.2006.58

  • Sloman A (1994) Semantics in an intelligent control system. Philos Trans R Soc Phys Sci Eng 349(1689):43–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sloman A, Scheutz M (2002) A framework for comparing agent architectures. In: Proceedings of the UK workshop on computational intelligence UKCI’02, pp 169–176

    Google Scholar 

  • Wooldridge M (2000) Reasoning about rational agents. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am highly indebted to Natasha Alechina: without her logical abilities and willingness to invent nonstandard logical approaches to models of agents, none of this work would have been possible. I am also indebted to colleagues in the agent programming language community, particularly Rafael Bordini, Mehdi Dastani, Koen Hindriks and John-Jules Meyer and to former and current students in the Agents Lab at Nottingham, including Mark Jago, Neil Madden, Abdur Rakib, Nguyen Hoang Nga, Fahad Khan and Doan Thu Trang.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of  Nottingham, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK

    Brian Logan

Authors
  1. Brian Logan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brian Logan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Jeremy L. Wyatt

  2. School of Social Sciences, University of Northampton, Northampton, United Kingdom

    Dean D. Petters

  3. School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

    David C. Hogg

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Logan, B. (2014). What Does It Mean to Have an Architecture?. In: Wyatt, J., Petters, D., Hogg, D. (eds) From Animals to Robots and Back: Reflections on Hard Problems in the Study of Cognition. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06614-1_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06614-1_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06613-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06614-1

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation