The Belief-Desire-Intention Model of Agency

Within the ATAL community, the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model has come to be possibly the best known and best studied model of practical reasoning agents. There are several reasons for its success, but perhaps the most compelling are that the BDI model combines a respectable philosophical model of human practical reasoning, (originally developed by Michael Bratman [1]), a number of implementations (in the IRMA architecture [2] and the various PRS-like systems currently available [7]), several successful applications (including the now-famous fault diagnosis system for the space shuttle, as well as factory process control systems and business process management [8]), and finally, an elegant abstract logical semantics, which have been taken up and elaborated upon widely within the agent research community [14, 16].