A commonsense knowledge base supported multi-agent architecture

As the global communication and knowledge exchange between different domains in multi-agent systems (MAS) becomes more important, domain-specific knowledge can no longer solely support reasoning in MAS, whereas commonsense knowledge becomes more critical to the reasoning quality. Incorporating the commonsense knowledge bases (CKB) is at the cutting edge of this field. We are interested in how to reuse CKB in multi-agent systems architectures. Our target is to identify the best way, in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, for MAS to reason with the support of the commonsense knowledge base. In this study, we analyze the reasons for and feasibility of commonsense knowledge reuse in MAS during the knowledge management process, and investigate the commonsense knowledge base-supported MAS architecture design. Four possible approaches to incorporating commonsense knowledge into MAS, with either homogeneous or heterogeneous data, are proposed and tested with the same scenario. The performances have been evaluated using standardized metrics. After comparing the results, one approach is recommended and justifications are given, which constitutes the main contribution of this paper. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.