Reasoning about knowledge, belief and certainty in hierarchical multi-agent systems

Abstract

Multi-agent systems (MAS) have received extensive studies in the last decade. However, little attention is paid to investigation on reasoning about logics in MAS with hierarchical structures. This paper proposes a complete quantified temporal KBC (knowledge, belief and certainty) logic and corresponding reasoning in hierarchical multi-agent systems (HMAS). The key point is that internal beliefs and certainty, and external belief and certainty are considered in our logic. The internal beliefs and certainty show every agent is autonomous, while the external belief and certainty indicate the mutual influence of mental attitudes between two different agents on different layers in HMAS. To interpret this logic, we propose four classes of corresponding quantified interpreted systems, and define first-order KBC axiomatisations over HMAS, which are sound and complete with respect to the corresponding semantical classes. Finally, we give a case study to show the advantages in terms of expressiveness of our logic.