This paper proposes a new logic programming language called GOLOG whose interpreter automatically maintains an explicit representation of the dynamic world being modeled, on the basis of user supplied axioms about the preconditions and effects of actions and the initial state of the world. This allows programs to reason about the state of the world and consider the effects of various possible courses of action before committing to a particular behavior. The net effect is that programs may be written at a much higher level of abstraction than is usually possible. The language appears well suited for applications in high level control of robots and industrial processes, intelligent software agents, discrete event simulation, etc. It is based on a formal theory of action specified in an extended version of the situation calculus. A prototype implementation in Prolog has been developed.

. Golog is a new programming language based on a theory of action in the situation calculus that can be used to develop multi-agent applications. The Golog interpreter automatically maintains an explicit model of the agent's environment on the basis of user supplied axioms about the preconditions and effects of actions and the initial state of the environment. This allows agent programs to query the state of the environment and consider the effects of various possible courses of action before deciding how to act. This paper discusses a substantial multi-agent application developed in Golog: a system to support personal banking over computer networks. We describe the overall system and provide more details on the agent that assists the user in responding to changes in his financial situation. The advantages and limitations of Golog for developing multi-agent applications are discussed and various extensions are suggested. 1 Introduction Golog is a new logic programming language for dev...

In its most general form, we take cognitive robotics to be the study of the knowledge representation and reasoning problems faced by an autonomous robot (or agent) in a dynamic and incompletely known world. To quote from a manifesto by Levesque and Reiter [42]: “Central to this effort is to develop an understanding of the relationship between

Abstract IndiGolog is a programming language for autonomous agents that sense their environment and do planning as they operate. Instead of classical planning, it supports high-level program execution. The programmer provides a high-level nondeterministic program involving domain-specific actions and tests to perform the agent’s tasks. The IndiGolog interpreter then reasons about the preconditions and effects of the actions in the program to find a legal terminating execution. To support this, the programmer provides a declarative specification of the domain (i.e., primitive actions, preconditions and effects, what is known about the initial state) in the situation calculus. The programmer can control the amount of nondeterminism in the program and how much of it is searched over. The language is rich and supports concurrent programming. Programs are executed online together with sensing the environment and monitoring for events, thus supporting the development of reactive agents. We discuss the language, its implementation, and applications that have been realized with it.

IndiGolog is a programming language for autonomous agents that sense their environment and do planning as they operate. Instead of classical planning, it supports high-level program execution. The programmer provides a high-level nondeterministic program involving domain-specific actions and tests to perform the agent’s tasks. The IndiGolog interpreter then reasons about the preconditions and effects of the actions in the program to find a legal terminating execution. To support this, the programmer provides a declarative specification of the domain (i.e., primitive actions, preconditions and effects, what is known about the initial state) in the situation calculus. The programmer can control the amount of nondeterminism in the program and how much of it is searched over. The language is rich and supports concurrent programming. Programs are executed online together with sensing the environment and monitoring for events, thus supporting the development of reactive agents. We discuss the language, its implementation, and applications that have been realized with it.