27820977
A Monotonic Formalism for Events and Systems of Events
The aim of this paper is to provide a basis for a theory of events and systems of events that can be used for reasoning about arbitrarily complex dynamic domains involving multiple agents. The approach is based on a model of events that explicitly represents the domain of influence of each event By restricting the scope of an event's domain of influence, most of the problems that have seriously troubled the more conventional state-transition models of events can be avoided. The effect of performing events, either in isolation or in parallel with other events, is described. A formalism is developed that allows reasoning about arbitrarily complex behaviours. It is shown how this formalism avoids the frame problem yet allows the ramifications of any given event occurrence to be modelled without the introduction of non-monotonic mechanisms. Finally, the notion of system is introduced to provide a compositional means for reasoning about complex
15317926
Planned Team Activity
Agents situated in dynamic environments can be supplied in advance with a repertoire of plans that permit them to rapidly generate appropriate sequences of actions in response to important events. When agents can form teams, new problems emerge regarding the representation and execution of joint actions. In this paper we introduce a language for representing joint plans for teams of agents, we describe how agents can organize the formation of a suitably skilled team to achieve a joint goal, and we explain how such a team can execute these plans to generate complex, synchronized team activity. The formalism provides a framework for representing and reasoning about joint actions in which various approaches to co-ordination and commitment can be explored.
11388485
The number of reachable pairs in a digraph
For a digraph G, let R(G) (respectively, R^(^k^)(G)) be the number of ordered pairs (u,v) of vertices of G such that u v and v is reachable from u (respectively, reachable from u by a path of length ==k+(k+1)^0^.^5^7+2, for arbitrary k.