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Journal of Logic and Computation 2005 15(5):701-749; doi:10.1093/logcom/exi027
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Vol. 15 No. 5, © The Author, 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Original Articles

A First-order Theory of Communication and Multi-agent Plans

Ernest Davis1 and Leora Morgenstern2

1 Dept. of Computer Science, Courant Institute, New York University, 251 Mercer St., New York NY 10012, USA. Email: davise{at}cs.nyu.edu, 2 IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, 30 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA. Email: leora{at}steam.stanford.edu

This paper presents a theory expressed in first-order logic for describing and supporting inference about action, knowledge, planning, and communication, in an egalitarian multi-agent setting. The underlying ontology of the theory uses a situationbased temporal model and a possible-worlds model of knowledge. It supports plans and communications of a very general kind, both informative communications and requests. Communications may refer to states of the world or states of knowledge in the past, present, or future. We demonstrate that the theory is powerful enough to represent several interesting multi-agent planning problems and to justify their solutions. We have proven that the theory of knowledge, communication, and planning is consistent with a broad range of physical theories, despite the existence of a number of potential paradoxes.

Keywords: Multi-agent planning, knowledge, communication

Received 10 June 2003.


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