An Argumentation-Based Flexible Agent with Dynamic Rules of Inference

Currently, little attention has been paid to the agent architecture that allows rules (including non-ground rules) to be inserted into or deleted from the agents´ knowledge base at run-time. Meanwhile, it is unclear that how the theories for reasoning and decision-making are generated and updated in accordance with a set of changing rules, and how agents deliberate according to the dynamic theories. In this paper, we introduce a flexible agent based on the language of defeasible logic and the formalism of argumentation. The architecture of flexible agent is similar to BDI (beliefs-desires-intentions), but the knowledge for decision-making (a set of non-ground rules) is allowed to be changed at run-time, and the reasoning process is non-monotonic. After presenting the architecture of flexible agent, we show how the theories for agent reasoning are represented, generated and updated. Then, an argumentation-based deliberation method with dynamic theories is put forward. Different from the process of argument construction in the existing argumentation theories, the one in flexible agent is non-monotonic, i.e., the arguments and the defeat relations among them can be updated (added or subtracted) with the variation of theories. We show that this novel agent is both autonomous and flexible, so it is adaptable to the open and dynamic environment where the observations and the external business requirements are changeable.