Towards Forward Responsibility in BDI Agents

Rafael C. Cardoso, Angelo Ferrando, Joe Collenette, Louise A. Dennis, Michael Fisher

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss forward responsibilities in Belief-Desire-Intention agents, that is, responsibilities that can drive future decision-making. We focus on individual rather than global notions of responsibility. Our contributions include: (a) extended operational semantics for responsibility-aware rational agents; (b) hierarchical responsibilities for improving intention selection based on the priorities (i.e., hierarchical level) of a responsibility; and (c) shared responsibilities which allow agents with the same responsibility to update their priority levels (and consequently commit or not to the responsibility) depending on the lack (or surplus) of agents that are currently engaged with it.