Today I read a paper titled “Agent Programming with Declarative Goals”
The abstract is:
A long and lasting problem in agent research has been to close the gap between agent logics and agent programming frameworks.
The main reason for this problem of establishing a link between agent logics and agent programming frameworks is identified and explained by the fact that agent programming frameworks have not incorporated the concept of a `declarative goal’.
Instead, such frameworks have focused mainly on plans or `goals-to-do’ instead of the end goals to be realised which are also called `goals-to-be’.
In this paper, a new programming language called GOAL is introduced which incorporates such declarative goals.
The notion of a `commitment strategy’ – one of the main theoretical insights due to agent logics, which explains the relation between beliefs and goals – is used to construct a computational semantics for GOAL.
Finally, a proof theory for proving properties of GOAL agents is introduced.
Thus, we offer a complete theory of agent programming in the sense that our theory provides both for a programming framework and a programming logic for such agents.
An example program is proven correct by using this programming logic.