On the epistemic feasibility of plans in multiagent systems specifications

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of ensuring that agents' plans are epistemically feasible in multiagent systems specifications. We propose some solutions within the Cognitive Agents Specification Language (CASL).We define a subjective execution construct Subj that causes the plan to be executed in terms of the agent's knowledge state, rather than in terms of the world state. The definition assumes that the agent does not do planning or lookahead, and chooses arbitrarily among the actions allowed by the plan. We also define another deliberative execution operator Delib for smarter agents that do planning. We show how these notions can be used to express whether a process is epistemically feasible for its agent(s) in several types of situations. More generally, the paper shows how a formalization of epistemic feasibility can be integrated with a transition-system semantics for an agent programming/specification language. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.