Information-passing and belief-revision in multi-agent systems

Abstract

We define a programming language for multi agent systems in which agents interact with a common environment and cooperate by exchanging their individual beliefs on the environment. In handling the information they acquire, the agents employ operations to expand remove and update their individual belief bases. The overall framework, which generalizes traditional concurrent programming concepts, is parameterized by an information system of constraints. Such a system is used to represent the environment as well as the beliefs of the agents. We give the syntax of the programming language and develop an operational semantics in terms of a transition system.