Logics for multi-agent systems: a critical overview

Speaker: Andreas Herzig

Affiliation: French National Center for Scientific Research

Time: Friday 21/11/2014 from 13:30 to 14:30

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Penrith (Y239), accessible from Parramatta (EB.1.32) and Campbelltown (26.1.50).

Abstract: Formal models for multi-agent systems (MAS) have been introduced and studied in various areas, not only in distributed systems and AI, but also in economics and the social sciences. I will focus on logical models of the central concepts of knowledge, belief, time, and action, and will give an overview of the existing logics for MAS from a knowledge representation point of view. I will classify various MAS logics according to the epistemic and the action dimension, distinguishing individual and group action and individual and group knowledge. I will highlight problematic aspects of each of the standard accounts, including frame axioms, strategy contexts and uniform strategies.

Biography:

Andreas Herzig is a senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and works at the the Toulouse Computer Science Research Institute (IRIT). He studied computer science in Darmstadt and Toulouse and obtained a Ph.D. (1989) and a habilitation (1999) in Computer Science, both from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. He works at CNRS since 1990.

Andreas's main research topic is the investigation of logical models of interaction, with a focus on logics for reasoning about knowledge, belief, time, action, intention and obligation, and the development of theorem proving methods for them. He currently investigates the integration of logics of belief and group belief with theories of action, in particular in the framework of dynamic epistemic logics.

Andreas was one of the key persons who helped in setting up the Cotutelle Program between University of Western Sydney and University of Toulouse. He was the official French supervisor of our PhD graduates Masabumi Furuhata and Dengji Zhao.