DECLARATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS

This paper explores the specification and semantics of multiagent prob lem-solving systems, focusing on the representations that agents have of each other. It provides a declarative representation for such syste ms. Several procedural solutions to a well-known test-bed problem are considered, and the requirements they impose on different agents are i dentified. A study of these requirements yields a representational sch eme based on temporal logic for specifying the acting, perceiving, com municating, and reasoning abilities of computational agents. A formal semantics is provided for this scheme. The resulting representation is highly declarative, and useful for describing systems of agents solvi ng problems reactively.