Preference-based reasoning in BDI agent systems

An important feature of BDI agent systems is number of different ways in which an agent can achieve its goals. The choice of means to achieve the goal in made by the system at run time, depending on contextual information that is not available in advance. In this article, we explore ways that the user of an agent system can specify preferences which can be incorporated into the BDI execution process and used to guide the choices made. For example, a user of a travel system can specify a preferred airline, or a particular kind of accommodation, and the system will use this information to satisfy the goal and preferences, if possible. Preferences are specified in terms of properties of goals and resource usage, and are used to make two types of decisions: (a) select a plan when there is a choice and (b) determine the order in which subgoals of a plan should be pursued when their order is not fixed by design. We have implemented our preference framework in Jadex, and provide detailed case studies within the context of a holiday travel agent application.