BeliefDesireIntentionLecture

Simple Non-Operational Definition (David Kinny-Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute)

1. Is embedded in an environment from which it receives "events" that carry information about the state of the environment, and within which it can perform "actions" that modify that environment.

2. Contains representations (as objects, data structures, or whatever) of:
   • "beliefs", which constitute its knowledge of the state of its environment (and perhaps also some internal state),
   • "desires", which determine its motivation ­ what it is trying to bring about, maintain, find out, etc., and
   • "intentions", which capture its decisions about how to act in order to fulfil its desires. It should be possible, by an internal examination, to say at any instant precisely what the "mental state" (B's, D's, and I's) of an agent is.

3. Has a control mechanism which ensures that:
   • Its beliefs change over time in response to external events (and perhaps due to internal actions),
   • Its intentions determine and cause sequences of actions to be taken,
   • Its intentions change over time as a result of its beliefs changing, its desires becoming fulfilled or failing to be fulfilled, actions being taken, and new events being received.

• Introduction (BdiIntroduction).
• Intentional Systems (IntentionalAgents).
• Intentional Attitudes (IntentionalAttitudes).
• Intentional Notions (IntentionalNotions).
• Possible Worlds & Modal Logic (PossibleWorlds).
• Normal Modal Logic (NormalModalLogic).
• Theory of Intentions (TheoryOfIntentions).
• Possible Worlds Example (PossibleWorldsExample).
• BDIM Agent Toolkit (BdimAgentToolkit).
• BDI Agent Issues (BdiAgentIssues).

Cohen, P. R. and Levesque, H. J., 1990a. "Intention is choice with comitment". Artificial Intelligence, 42, pp. 213-61.

Cohen, P. R. and Levesque, H. J., 1990b. "Rational interaction as the basis for communications". Intentions in Communication, pp. 221-56, MIT Press.

Rao, A. S. and Georgeff, M. P., 1991. "Modelling rational agents within a BDI architecture". In Proc. of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR&R-91), pp. 473-84, Morgan Kaufman.

Rao, A. S. and Georgeff, M. P., 1992. "An abstract architecture for rational agents". In Proc. of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR&R-92), pp. 439-49.

Shoham, Y., 1993. "Agent oriented programming", Artificial Intelligence, 60(1), pp. 51-92.

Woolridge, M. and Jenningd, N. R., 1995. "Intelligent agents: theory and practice". The Knowledge Engineering Review, 10(2), pp. 115-52.

Links to other Sources

• Agents in Complex Environments (BDI) [1]

		[SoftwareAgentCourse | SoftwareAgentCourse | BdiIntroduction]