Toward a semantics for an agent communications language based on speech0-acts
Ira Smith, Philip R. Cohen · 1996
Implementations of systems based on distributed agent architectures require an agent communications language that has a clearly de#ned semantics. Without one, neither agents nor developers can be sure what another agent's commitment to perform a task means #to name just one speech act#. This paper demonstrates that a semantics for an agent communications language can be founded on the premise that interagent communications constitute a task-oriented dialogue in which agents are building, maintaining, and disbanding teams through their performance of communicative acts. This view requires that de#nitions of basic communicative acts, such as requesting, be recast in terms of the formation of a jointintention --- a mental state that has been suggested underlies team behavior. Thus, a model of teamwork based on jointintentions is shown to provide the coherence for interagent dialogue, and provides motivation for its step-by-step progression in virtue of the performance of commun...