Designing a knowledge representation interface for cognitive agents

Abstract

The design of cognitive agents involves a knowledge representation (KR) to formally represent and manipulate information relevant for that agent. In practice, agent programming frameworks are dedicated to a specific KR, limiting the use of other possible ones. In this paper we address the issue of creating a flexible choice for agent programmers regarding the technology they want to use. We propose a generic interface, that provides an easy choice of KR for cognitive agents. Our proposal is governed by a number of design principles, an analysis of functional requirements that cognitive agents pose towards a KR, and the identification of various features provided by KR technologies that the interface should capture. We provide two use-cases of the interface by describing its implementation for Prolog and OWL with rules.