Creating Collective Intention through Dialogue.pdfVIP

Creating Collective Intention through Dialogue FRANK DIGNUM, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing Science, Technical University Eindhoven, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. E-mail: dignum@win.tue.nl BARBARA DUNIN-KE?PLICZ, Institute of Informatics, Warsaw University, Banacha 2, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: keplicz@mimuw.edu.pl RINEKE VERBRUGGE, Cognitive Science and Engineering, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: rineke@tcw2.ppsw.rug.nl Abstract The process of cooperative problem solving can be divided into four stages. First, finding potential team members, then forming a team followed by constructing a plan for that team. Finally, the plan is executed by the team. Traditionally, very simple protocols like the Contract Net protocol are used for performing the first two stages of the process. In an open environment however, there can be discussion among the agents in order to form a team that can achieve the collective intention of solving the problem. For these cases fixed protocols like contract net do not suffice. In this paper we present an alternative solution, using structured dialogues, with an emphasis on persuasion, that can be shown to lead to the required team formation. The dialogues are described formally using modal logics and speech acts. Keywords: Teamwork and cooperation, dialogue, speech acts, multi-agent logics 1 Introduction Contract Net [14] is often proposed as a simple but effective and efficient way to distribute tasks over a number of agents in order to achieve a common goal. The reason of the success of this approach is the fact that it is completely fixed and thus easy to implement. In our opinion, however, the inflexibility is a disadvantage of this approach. A good candidate to make conversation between agents more flexible is the theory of dialogue [18]. This theory gives rules for appropriate moves within different types of dialogues. The rules direct the dialog