Agent-based computing in Arti cial Intelligence has given rise to a number of diverse and competing proposals for agent programming languages. Agents, in the sense we are using it, are complex mental entities consisting of beliefs, goals, and intentions. For several reasons it has been di cult to evaluate and compare the di erent proposals for agent languages. One of the main reasons, in our opinion, is the lack of a general semantic framework which provides a suitable basis for language comparison. Our aim is to make as much use as possible of formal methods from the area of programming semantics. In this paper, we give a formal embedding of the agent language AgentSpeak(L) in our own agent language 3APL. To this end we de ne a notion of simulation based on the formal operational semantics of the languages. The main result of the paper is a proof that 3APL can simulate AgentSpeak(L). As a consequence, 3APL has at least the same expressive power as AgentSpeak(L). The comparison yields some new insights into the features of the agent languages. One of the results is that AgentSpeak(L) can be substantially simpli ed.
REF formally compare the agent languages AgentSpeak(L) and 3APL and shows that the former can be embedded into the latter.
A Formal Embedding of AgentSpeak(L) in 3APL
Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Computer Science