Title: From Dynamic Epistemic Logic to Socially Intelligent Robots

Speaker: Thomas Bolander (DTU)

Time: 15:10 -18:00 (Sep. 12th)

Location: Room 108, Buidling of Geology (地学楼), PKU

Abstract:

Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) can be used as a formalism for agents to represent the mental states of other agents: their beliefs and knowledge, and potentially even their plans and goals. Hence, the logic can be used as a formalism to give agents a Theory of Mind allowing them to take the perspective of other agents. In my research, I have combined DEL with techniques from automated planning in order to describe a theory of what I call Epistemic Planning: planning where agents explicitly reason about the mental states of others. One of the recurring themes is implicit coordination: how to successfully achieve joint goals in decentralised multi-agent systems without prior negotiation or coordination. The talk will first motivate the importance of Theory of Mind reasoning to achieve efficient agent interaction and coordination, will then give a brief introduction to epistemic planning based on DEL, address its (computational) complexity, address issues of implicit coordination and, finally, demonstrate applications of epistemic planning in human-robot collaboration.