A Formal Notion of Objective Expectations in the Context of Multiagent Systems Routines

Abstract. This paper introduces an objective notion of routine expectation, to allow for the external account of expectations in the context of routine procedures, in multiagent systems (MAS). The notion of expectation as usually applied to MAS is briefly reviewed. A formalization of routine procedure is given, so that the formal notion of routine expectation can be defined with respect to actions and facts. A view previously proposed in the literature, to base expectation values on a combination of probability values and utility values, is adopted. However, it is adapted to the context of repetitive, periodic system routines, where utility values can be replaced by the degrees of perfection with which actions and facts are realized. 1 Introduction: motivation and related works In general there are different ways of considering the notion of expectation in agent systems. For example, a mentalist, or cognitivist approach defines an expectation as a complex set of cognitive elements (a combination of goals, beliefs, etc.) [1]. Such kind of subjectivist approach may also take the way adopted in [2, 3], briefly suggeste