Intelligent Agent Systems: Theoretical and Practical Issues Theoretical and Practical Issues. Based on a Workshop Held at PRICAI '96, Cairns, Australia, August 26-30, 1996

The agents approach is not just another abstract computing paradigm, but has matured during recent years into a booming research area and software engineering technology which holds great promise for the design and application of complex distributed systems.
This book presents 12 revised full chapters grouped around 3 main topics in intelligent agent systems; agent architectures, formal theories of rationality and cooperation and collaboration. Among the topics addressed are software agents, BDI architectures, social commitment, believable agents and artificial life. The book is based on the Workshop on Theoretical and Practical Foundations of Intelligent Agents held at the Fourth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Cairns, Australia, in August 1996.

Control architectures for autonomous and interacting agents: A survey.- An experiment in using Golog to build a personal banking assistant.- An agent-based architecture for software tool coordination.- A system for modelling agents having emotion and personality.- Commitments in the architecture of a limited, rational agent.- Dynamic goal hierarchies.- Limited logical belief analysis.- Semantics of BDI agents and their environment.- Constructing finite state implementations of knowledge-based programs with perfect recall (Extended abstract).- Social and individual commitment.- Emergent properties of teams of agents in the Tileworld.- How do autonomous agents solve social dilemmas?.