Activities

During the first ModelAge year several SG2 meetings took place:

• Preparation Meeting (August 23, 1994, Schloss Dagstuhl)
• Coordination Meeting (September 29, 1994, Amsterdam)
• SG2 Meeting (January 22, 1995, Sophia-Antipolis)
• SG2 Tutorial during the ModelAge General Meeting (January 22, 1995, Sophia-Antipolis)

A workshop with talks and extensive discussion is scheduled for July 21th/22nd, 1995 at Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany.

Beside general SG2 meetings there are several closer co-operations among which are the following:

• Lisbon and London have collaborated on the identification and formalisation of behaviour prescription techniques for object/agent-based systems. These have included the distinction between permission and obligation guards in guarded commands and the refinement of the atomicity of actions.
• A co-operation on several topics has been established with participation of Lisbon, Magdeburg, and London. For more details see the minutes of the Working Meeting which took place in March'95 in Lisbon.
• Two students from Namur visited EURIDIS in Rotterdam (Sept.--Dec.'94).
• Together with Lisbon and London, Oslo is exploring the possibilities of a synthesis between the dynamic logic approach to the logic of action, and the approach deriving from the modal logic of agency. One focus of this exploration is the analysis of the ``by'' construction as it is used in such expressions as ``Agent X does P BY DOING Q''. Preliminary discussion of this work began at the Sophia Antipolis meeting, and work on this topic is expected to continue in the second year of ModelAge.

The following lines of research will be pursued in the second year of ModelAge:

• Use of SG2 logics and related concepts for a semantic framework for interoperability of heterogeneous databases, integration of constraints in different logical database frameworks.
• The specification of the behaviour of intelligent (rational) agents with respect to their capabilities by means of a modal (dynamic, epistemic) logic. This year special focus will be directed to an intuitive formalization of motivational attitudes of agents.
• The development of a (dynamic logic-based) deontic logic to express preferences for resolving conflicting obligations.
• The specification of real-time deontic integrity constraints, like deadlines. This calls for an integration of temporal (real-time) and dynamic and deontic logics, and a specification language based on these in order to express these constraints. Also work will be done on theorem proving / animation tools for the methodological support for the use of this language.
• Emergence of properties in object/agent-based specifications and its relationship with compositionality as known in reactive system specification.
• The relationship between non-determinism and liveness as it emerges from the distinction between permission and obligation guards, leading to a uniform treatment of active and passive agents.
• Synthesis between the dynamic logic approach to the logic of action, and the approach deriving from the modal logic of agency.