Chapters in Books on Agents

Error-Tolerant Agents

T. Eiter, V. Mascardi and V.S. Subrahmanian

Computational Logic: Logic Programming and Beyond - Essays in Honour of Robert A. Kowalski, Part I. A.C. Kakas and F. Sadri, editors, Springer-Verlag 2002, pages 586-625, LNAI 2407.

The use of agents in today's Internet world is expanding rapidly. Yet, agent developers proceed largely under the optimistic assumption that agents will be error-free. Errors may arise in agents for numerous reasons - agents may share a workspace with other agents or humans and updates made by these other entities may cause an agent to face a situation that it was not explicitly programmed to deal with. Likewise, errors in coding agents may lead to inconsistent situations where it is unclear how the agent should act. In this paper, we define an agent execution model that allows agents to continuing acting "reasonably" even when some errors of the above types occur. More importantly, in our framework, agents take "repair" actions automatically when confronted with such situations, but while taking such repair actions, they can often continue to engage in work and/or interactions with other agents that are unaffected by repairs.

The compressed postscript version of this paper is available through anonymous ftp at ftp.disi.unige.it, in /pub/person/MascardiV/Papers/LNAI2407.ps.gz

@incollection{LNAI2407,
author = {T. Eiter and V. Mascardi and V. S. Subrahmanian},
title = {{Error-Tolerant Agents}},
booktitle = {Computational Logic: Logic Programming and Beyond -- Essays in Honour of Robert A. Kowalski, Part I},
editors = {A. Kakas and F. Sadri},
year = {2002},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
pages = {586--625},
note = {Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2407}}

Logic Programming & Multi-Agent Systems: a Synergic Combination for Applications and Semantics

M. Bozzano, G. Delzanno, M. Martelli, V. Mascardi and F. Zini

In The Logic Programming Paradigm: a 25-Year Perspective. K. R. Apt, V. W. Marek, M. Truszczynsky and D. S. Warren editors, pages 5-32, Springer-Verlag, 1999.

The paper presents an ongoing research project that uses Logic Programming, Linear Logic Programming, and their related techniques for executable specifications and rapid prototyping of Multi-Agent Systems. The MAS paradigm is an extremely rich one and we believe that Logic Programming will play a very effective role in this area, both as a tool for developing real applications and as a semantically well founded language for basing program analysis and proof of properties on.

The compressed postscript version of this paper is available through anonymous ftp at ftp.disi.unige.it, in /pub/person/MascardiV/Papers/LPparadigm.ps.gz

@incollection{LPparadigm,
author = {M. Bozzano and G. Delzanno and M. Martelli and V. Mascardi and F. Zini},
title = {{Logic Programming \& Multi-Agent Systems: a Synergic Combination for Applications and Semantics}},
booktitle = {The Logic Programming Paradigm: a 25-Year Perspective},
editor = {K. R. Apt and V. W. Marek and M. Truszczynski and D. S. Warren},
year = {1999},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
pages = {5--32}}