Operational Modelling of Agent Autonomy: Theoretical Aspects and a Formal Language

Autonomy has always been conceived as one of the defining attributes of intelligent agents. While the past years have seen considerable progress regarding theoretical aspects of autonomy, and while autonomy has been identified as an enabler for new computing paradigms such as grid computing, (web-)serviceoriented computing or ubiquitous computing, autonomy as a software property is still miles away from implementation. The main reason for this is that while software can be given the autonomy to act on its own, it will always be the designers or users who are responsible for its actions in a legal sense. Hence, the implementation of autonomy will require rigorous modelling and verification, so as to ensure maximum dependability of systems acting autonomously. We take a first step in this direction by introducing a formal language ASL (Autonomy Specification Language) that allows for a precise specification of the activities to be carried out by a set of agents, the deontic constra...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: AOSE
• Authors: Gerhard Weiß, Felix A. Fischer, Matthias Nickles, Michael Rovatsos
• Keywords: Agent Autonomy, AOSE 2005, Autonomy Specification Language, Formal Language Asl