Logical formalization of social commitments: Application to agent communication languages (long version of AAMAS 2009)

Nowadays most of the Agent Communication Languages are no longer defined in terms of the agents' mental attitudes, but in terms of social commitments, which avoids strong hypotheses on the agents' internal states and thus allows verification of the semantics. While social approaches have attracted a lot of attention, two drawbacks remain. First, the notion of commitment does not have a clear and unambiguous characterization. Second, commitments are completely unrelated to the agents' reasoning. The aim of this paper is to propose a solution for these two problems based on a combination of a BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) logic with a logic of what is publicly grounded between agents