From Reality to Mind: A Cognitive Middle Layer of Environment Concepts
for Believable Agents
E4MAS'04: Proc. 1st Int'l Workshop on Environments
for Multi-Agent Systems, volume 3374 of LNAI, page 57--73. New York, NY, USA, Springer, (2004)DOI: 10.1007/b106134
Abstract
The environment is an important but overlooked piece in the construction
of multiagent-based scenarios. Richness, believability and variety
of scenarios are inseparable from the environment because every action
and interaction of agents is based around the environment they are
situated in. The prerequisite, however, is that agents must be able
to understand the environment and capture its dynamic nature. This
paper proposes a cognitive middle layer between agent minds and the
environment. Aspects of the reality are mapped to concepts in the
middle layer, through which agents can feel and reason about the
real environment. The middle layer is modelled with a structured
specification based on Web Ontology Language (OWL) to be extensible
and reusable. Environmental concepts are integrated into the goal
processing of agents to trigger intentions. This paper also reports
our initial investigation about the design of a simulation system
for multiple environment-aware agents and multiple users.
