How Situated Is Your Agent? A Cognitive Perspective

Abstract

Software agents are situated in an environment with which they interact reactively or in a goal-directed fashion. Generally, such environments do not assume a structure, hence are deemed to be unpredictable. Recent approaches adopt an environment model where artifacts form the building blocks which represent functional components that an agent can exploit for reaching its goals. It has been argued that software agents can improve/amend their capabilities at run time through the use of (new) artifacts as possible means. We argue that such a run time adaptation by the agents can be realized by creating an appropriate relationship between agent reasoning and the functionality of the artifacts. We have coined the term extrospection to refer to the act of an agent reasoning about the tools. In this paper, we first identify the features of extrospection, then, we extend the belief, desire, intention (BDI) agent deliberation cycle to encompass extrospection.