Modelling Agent in Situation Calculus by Robert Demolombe and Pilar Pozos Parra

Course description:

Motivations. Interactions between agents in the context of Multi Agent  Systems involve  some basic  concepts such  as  action, belief, desire,    intention   and    obligation.   These    require   precise definitions. There have been several proposals for their formalisation in the framework of modal logic.

An alternative approach uses Situation Calculus, which is a variant of classical  logic.  Many  of  the  aforementioned  concepts  have  been addressed using Situation Calculus by researchers at, or in connection with, the  Cognitive Robotic Group  at Toronto University. One  of the benefits of these  formalisms is to offer a  more intuitive perception of concepts than  modal operators to people who  are not familiar with non-classical logics.  Another positive  aspect of this framework is a rather  simple solution  to the  frame problem  for the  definition of evolution   of  some  basic   concepts  involving   agents.   Finally, Situational Calculus approaches have the pragmatic advantage that they can be rather easily implemented to prototype toy applications.

Tutor bio:

Robert  Demolombe  is  researcher  at  ONERA  (Office  National d'Etudes  et de Recherches  Aérospatiales) since  1975. He  defended a Thèse  d'Etat at the  Toulouse  University in  1982 (supervisor:  Alain Colmerauer) about  the applications  of classical logic  to Relational Databases.

In  the eighties he  has applied  modal logic  to the  formalisation of integrity  constraints  and cooperative  answering.  In particular  he designed a specific logic, with Andrew J.I. Jones, for reasoning about the  topics of  formal  sentences. In  the  nineties he  moved to  the formalisation of  regulations for interactions between  agents. In the field of Automated Reasoning, he defined, with Luis Fariñas del Cerro, a deduction strategy for  abductive reasoning in classical first order logic.

From the  end of the nineties  he used the framework  of the Situation Calculus for  belief change  and obligation change,  and he  defined a translation from  Situation Calculus to Modal Logic.  He also combined the Situation  Calculus and Probability Theory to  propose a technique for   intention   recognition   in   the  context   of   human machine interactions.

He  gave  lectures at  Sup'Aéro,  from 1978  to  1999,  about Logic  and Databases, and  at Toulouse University,  from 1998 to 2003,  about Logic Applied to Information Systems Regulation.

He was member of   the programme committee of the conferences: VLDB, FQAS, ISMIS and DEON for several  years. He is member of the editorial board of the journal Fundamenta Informaticae.

See also his web page at: www.cert.fr/francais/deri/demolombe/

Pilar  Pozos-Parra  gained   a  Master's  degree  in  Knowledge Representation and  Formalization of  Reasoning in 1998  and a  PhD in Artificial  Intelligence   in  2002,   both  at  Sup'Aéro   College  in France. She  spent one  year 2002-2003 as  Assistant Professor  in the School of Physics and Mathematics, University of Puebla in Mexico, and two years 2003-2005 as Research Fellow in the Department of Computing, Macquarie  University  in  Australia.  Since  October 2005  she  is  a Professor  in the postgraduate  School, University  of the  Mixteca in Mexico. Her main research interests lie in BDI architecture, Situation
Calculus, Merging and Automated Reasoning.