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6.6.5 Behavior of an agent
Recalling the given definitions, an agent is comprised of sensors and
effectors which may be active in parallel. The behavior of an agent
A
is defined as response to (exogenous and endogenous) events. An
agent may receive an event due to two different circumstances: while
endogenous events are tied to a specific agent, exogenous events may
be perceived by a number of agents (depending on their sensors and
embedding in the environment). Once an agent receives an event, the
corresponding sensors and effectors are activated.
Definition 22 (Behavior of an agent)
Given an agent
A
receiv-
ing at time
t
0
∈
T
an event
e
of an event type defined in
EV
.The
behavior of
A
is defined as:
1. Let
X
act
be the subset of sensors and effectors of agent
A
which are
activated by event
e
. Formally:
X
act
=
x∈
SEN
∪
EFF
|e
activates
x
x
.
2. Each sensor and effector
x ∈ X
act
is activated by event
e
at time
t
0
.
Each active sensor and effector has to comply with the following
specifications:
a) Ensure compliance with given constraints
The sensor or effector
x
is active in the interval [
t
0
,t
1
], i. e.,
action
x
starts at
t
0
and ends at
t
1
. During the whole time it
has to be ensured that all constraints defined within the model
M
are fulfilled:
success
=
c
(
M
t
,x
)
(6.9)
∀t∈
[
t
0
,t
1
]:
∀c∈
C
success
becomes false if any constraint is violated in the interval
[
t
0
,t
1
].
b) Two scenarios are possible for finishing the sensor or effector
action
x
(cp. Figure 6.8):
success
= true: The sensor or effector
x
finishes successfully
at
t
1
and the model state as well as the agent state are
altered accordingly.
