Dialogs with BDP Agents in Virtual Environments

In this paper we discuss a multi-modal agent platform, based on the BDI paradigm. We now have environments where more than one agent is available and where there is a need for uniformity in agent design and agent interaction. This requires a more general and uniform approach to developing agent-oriented virtual environments that allow multi-modal interaction. We first focus on a formal model for conversational planning agents, for which we discuss the specification of beliefs, desires and conditional plans. Then we discuss the relation between natural language and the communication as it is defined for these agents. We also show how referential problems are treated in the process of interpreting the informational content in a dialog situation. The general agent framework will be used in the specification of agents in a virtual environment, that can interact in a multi-modal way with others.