Abstract
The capabilities for agents in a team to anticipate information-needs of teammates and proactively offer relevant information are highly desirable. However, such behaviors have not been fully prescribed by existing agent theories. To establish a theory about proactive information exchanges, we first introduces the concept of ”information-needs”, then identify and formally define the intentional semantics of two proactive communicative acts, which highly depend on the speaker’s awareness of others’ information-needs. It is shown that communications using these proactive performatives can be derived as helping behaviors. Conversation policies involving these proactive performatives are also discussed. The work in this paper may serve as a guide for the specification and design of agent architectures, algorithms, and applications that support proactive communications in agent teamwork.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Rouse, W., Cannon-Bowers, J., Salas, E.: The role of mental models in team performance in complex systems. IEEE Trans. on Sys., man, and Cyber 22, 1296–1308 (1992)
Grosz, B., Kraus, S.: Collaborative plans for complex group actions. Artificial Intelligence 86, 269–358 (1996)
Grosz, B., Kraus, S.: The evolution of sharedplans. In: Rao, A., Wooldridge, M. (eds.) Foundations and Theories of Rational Agencies, pp. 227–262 (1999)
Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Performatives in a rationally based speech act theory. In: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 79–88 (1990)
Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Rational interaction as a basis for communication. In: Intentions in Communication, pp. 221–255. MIT Press, Cambridge (1990)
Smith, I., Cohen, P., Bradshaw, J., Greaves, M., Holmback, H.: Designing conversation policies using joint intention theory. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS 1998), pp. 269–276 (1998)
Searle, J.R.: How performatives work. Linguistics and Philosophy 12, 535–558 (1989)
Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Communicative actions for artificial agents. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1995)
Smith, I.A., Cohen, P.R.: Toward a semantics for an agent communications language based on speech-acts. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 1996), pp. 24–31. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1996)
FIPA: Agent communication language specification (2002)
OAIS: Reference model for an open archival information system (1999), http://www.ccsds.org/documents/pdf/CCSDS-650.0-R-1.pdf
Searle, J.: Indirect speech acts. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J. (eds.) Syntax and semantics. III. Speech acts, pp. 59–82. Academic Press, NY (1975)
Huber, M.J., Kumar, S., Cohen, P.R., McGee, D.R.: A formal semantics for proxycommunicative acts. In: Meyer, J.-J.C., Tambe, M. (eds.) ATAL 2001. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2333, p. 221. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Greaves, M., Holmback, H., Bradshaw, J.: What is a conversation policy? In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies at Autonomous Agents 1999 (1999)
Singh, M.P.: A social semantics for agent communication languages. In: Dignum, F., Greaves, M. (eds.) Issues in Agent Communication, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Parunak, C.: Visualizing agent conversations: Using enhanced dooley graphs for agent design and analysis. In: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Multi-Agent Syatems (ICMAS 1996), pp. 275–282 (1996)
Cost, R., Chen, Y., Finin, T., Labrou, Y., Peng, Y.: Modeling agent conversations with colored petri nets. In: Proceedings of workshop on Agent Conversation Policies at Agents 1999, Seattle, WA (1999)
Kumar, S., Huber, M.J., Cohen, P.R., McGee, D.R.: Toward a formalism for conversation protocols using joint intention theory. Computational Intelligence 18, 174–228 (2002)
Austin, J.: How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1962)
Searle, J.: Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1969)
Breiter, P., Sadek, M.: A rational agent as a kernel of a cooperative dialogue system: Implementing a logical theory of interaction. In: Proceedings of ECAI 1996 workshop on Agent Theories, architectures, and Languages, pp. 261–276. Springer, Berlin (1996)
Labrou, Y., Finin, T.: Semantics and conversations for an agent communication language. In: Huhns, M., Singh, M. (eds.) Readings in Agents, pp. 235–242. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1998)
Pitt, J., Mamdani, A.: A protocol-based semantics for an agent communication language. In: Proceedings of IJCAI 1999, pp. 486–491 (1999)
Labrou, Y.: Standardizing agent communication. In: Marik, V., Stepankova, O. (eds.) Multi-Agent Systems and Applications (Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence) (2001)
Vitteau, B., Huget, M.P.: Modularity in interaction protocols. In: Dignum, F.P.M. (ed.) ACL 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2922, pp. 291–309. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Chopra, A., Singh, M.: Nonmonotonic commitment machines. In: Dignum, F.P.M. (ed.) ACL 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2922, pp. 183–200. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Singh, M.P.: Agent communication languages: Rethinking the principles. IEEE Computer 31, 40–47 (1998)
Kahn, M., Cicalese, C.: The CoABS Grid. In: JPL Workshop on Rational Agent Concepts, Tysons Corner, VA (2002)
Tambe, M.: Towards flexible teamwork. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 7, 83–124 (1997)
Gray, R., Cybenko, G., Kotz, D., Peterson, R., Rus, D.: D’agents: Applications and performance of a mobile-agent system. Software, Practices and Experience 32, 543–573 (2002)
Yen, J., Yin, J., Ioerger, T., Miller, M., Xu, D., Volz, R.: CAST: Collaborative agents for simulating teamworks. In: Proceedings of IJCAI 2001, pp. 1135–1142 (2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Yen, J., Fan, X., Volz, R.A. (2004). Proactive Communications in Agent Teamwork. In: Dignum, F. (eds) Advances in Agent Communication. ACL 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2922. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24608-4_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24608-4_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20769-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24608-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive