Meta-agency and individual power

Abstract

The state of the art in the agent field is at the frontier of deploying real intelligent agents, able to build their own understanding of the world and of associated processes. Maybe that goal can be achieved through individual power: a framing concept for the agent's inner capabilities to achieve dominant goals. The research on individual power started from the BDI model and led to the distinction between external and internal factors in the agent's behaviour: while the former depends on the relation the agent has with its environment (including peers) and ties in with social power, the latter links up to the agent control and is rather less understood. In the individual power study, the focus is set on the integration of the agent's will, commitment and control structure. Such integration can be interpreted as an extension of the classic belief-desire-intention trilogy. This paper describes an experiment about the integration of will and commitment management in the agent's control structure. The experiment consists of two teams of agents, competing for resource gathering. While one team features reactive control, the other team uses new ideas exploring meta-agency for agent control and will for behaviour design. This experiment illustrates the integration and a virtual application of previous work on these subjects. The meta-agent and mental states based control is proven able to define flexible and effective behaviours. The agent's will, by centralising the management of commitments, simplifies the implementation, debugging and interpretation of such behaviours.