Alexander Williams

“Rao's AgentSpeak(L) is a Prolog-like resolution-based language, but which is extended to support agent-based programming in several ways, most importantly:
It extends the language, so that clauses can talk about not just satisfaction of predicates, but also of an agent desiring to bring about a predicate, and desiring to find out whether a predicate is true; and to distinguish between normal goals and special goals relevant to the BDI model (Belief-Desire-Intention model);
It amends the resolution engine to support what Rao calls reactive concurrency, where agents form plans via a process resembling SLD-resolution, but plans are formed or abandoned on the basis of agent-internal reactions called triggering events.
Rao and Georgeff's work on BDI agents and procedural reasoning together constitutes one of the most important contributions to the theory of agents in AI, a topic which hasn't been discussed much here on LtU, but was raised in the Agent Oriented Programming story.”