Messenger BDI: An Human and Cognitive Agent Communication approach over KQML
Resumo
While embedding Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents in resource-constrained devices enables autonomous operations, effective Human-Agent Interaction (HAI) for real-time supervision remains challenging due to complex, low-level communication barriers. This work proposes a chat-based web interface facilitating seamless human interaction with distributed BDI Multi-agent Systems (MAS). By allowing users to intuitively select speech-act performatives, the system automatically generates and delivers valid KQML messages to embedded agents. A proof-of-concept involving a simulated BDI-controlled UAV executing flight instructions validates the approach’s feasibility and effectiveness in supporting human-in-the-loop supervision for distributed, resource-constrained MAS.
Referências
Barange, M., Kabil, A., De Keukelaere, C., and Chevaillier, P. (2014). Task-Oriented Conversational Behavior of Agents for Collaboration in Human-Agent Teamwork. In PAAMS 2014. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07551-8_3.
Berger, A. and Pesty, S. (2005). Towards a Conversational Language for Artificial Agents in Mixed Community. In CEEMAS 2005. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/11559221_4.
Bordini, R. H. and Hübner, J. F. (2006). BDI Agent Programming in AgentSpeak Using Jason. In CLIMA 2005. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/11750734_9.
Bratman, M. E., Israel, D. J., and Pollack, M. E. (1988). Plans and resource-bounded practical reasoning. Computational Intelligence, 4(3):349–355. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8640.1988.tb00284.x.
Cardoso, R. C. and Ferrando, A. (2021). A Review of Agent-Based Programming for Multi-Agent Systems. Computers, 10(2):16. DOI: 10.3390/computers10020016.
Chang, Y., Li, Z., Lee, S., Park, J., and Yun, H. (2024). Exploring Human-AI Companion Dynamics: The Interplay between Chatbots and Users. In PACIS 2024 Proceedings. AIS Electronic Library. Available at: [link].
Chin, H., Zhunis, A., and Cha, M. (2024). Behaviors and Perceptions of Human-Chatbot Interactions Based on Top Active Users of a Commercial Social Chatbot. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW2):1–28. DOI: 10.1145/3687022.
De Silva, L., Meneguzzi, F., and Logan, B. (2020). BDI agent architectures: a survey. In IJCAI’20. ACM. URL: [link].
Endler, M., Baptista, G., Silva, L. D., Vasconcelos, R., Malcher, M., Pantoja, V., Pinheiro, V., and Viterbo, J. (2011). ContextNet: Context Reasoning and Sharing Middleware for Large-Scale Pervasive Collaboration and Social Networking. In PDT ’11, New York, NY, USA. ACM. DOI: 10.1145/2088960.2088962.
Finin, T., Fritzson, R., McKay, D., and McEntire, R. (1994). KQML as an agent communication language. In CIKM ’94, pages 456–463, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. ACM Press. DOI: 10.1145/191246.191322.
Flathmann, C., McNeese, N., and Canonico, L. B. (2019). Using Human-Agent Teams to Purposefully Design Multi-Agent Systems. Proceedings of the HFES Annual Meeting, 63(1):1425–1429. DOI: 10.1177/1071181319631238.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., and Pantoja, C. (2023). Uma Proposta de Emulador de Portas Seriais para Sistemas Multiagentes Embarcados. In Anais do XVII WESAAC, pages 55–66, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2023.33437.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., Pantoja, C., Jatoba, N., Pinto, V., and Viterbo, J. (2025a). A Migration Control Approach to Improve Security for Open MAS in IoT Networks. In PAAMS 2025. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-07638-0_21.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., Pantoja, C., and Viterbo, J. (2025b). Integrating Simulated Exogenous Environments to Support the Learning Process of the Embedded MAS Approach. In WEI 2025. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wei.2025.9115.
Gatti, A., Mascardi, V., and Ferrando, A. (2025). ChatBDI: Think BDI, Talk LLM. In Proceedings of the 24th AAMAS, page 2541–2543, Richland, SC. IFAAMAS. URL: [link].
Goel, P. and Ganatra, A. (2021). A Survey on Chatbot: Futuristic Conversational Agent for User Interaction. In ICSPC 2021, pages 736–740, Coimbatore, India. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICSPC51351.2021.9451763.
Hanna, N. and Richards, D. (2014). Human-agent teamwork in collaborative virtual environments. In AAMAS 2014, pages 1735–1736. IFAAMAS. URL: [link].
Jesus, V. S. d., Pantoja, C., Manoel, F., Alves, G., Viterbo, J., and Bezerra, E. (2021). Bio-Inspired Protocols for Embodied Multi-Agent Systems. In ICAART 2021, pages 312–320. SciTePress. DOI: 10.5220/0010257803120320.
Johnson, P. and Johnson, H. (2001). Interaction, collaboration and communication: A human-computer interaction perspective. In ACCOLADE: ARCHITECTURE, COLLABORATION, DESIGN, pages 43–58, NETHERLANDS. DELFT. URL: [link].
Lazarin, N. M., de Souza, J. P. B., Pantoja, C. E., Alexandre, T., and Viterbo, J. (2025). Human and BDI-Agent Interaction via KQML Messages over IMAP and SMTP. In PAAMS 2024. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-70415-4_15.
Lazarin, N. M., Pantoja, C. E., and Viterbo, J. (2024). Dealing with the Unpredictability of Physical Resources in Real-World Multi-agent Systems. In Agents and Artificial Intelligence, pages 48–71, Cham. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-55326-4_3.
Lewis, M. (1998). Designing for Human-Agent Interaction. AI Magazine, 19(2):67. DOI: 10.1609/aimag.v19i2.1369.
Lira, L., Serafim, A., Lazarin, N., Freitas, B., and Pantoja, C. (2025). BusAI: An BDI-agent-based Urban Transport Information System. In WESAAC 2025, pages 137–144. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2025.37550.
Ltifi, M. (2023). Trust in the chatbot: a semi-human relationship. Future Business Journal, 9(1):109. DOI: 10.1186/s43093-023-00288-z.
Michel, O. (1998). Webots: Symbiosis Between Virtual and Real Mobile Robots. In VW 1998. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-68686-X_24.
Pantoja, C. E., Jesus, V. S. d., Lazarin, N. M., and Viterbo, J. (2023). A Spin-off Version of Jason for IoT and Embedded Multi-Agent Systems. In Intelligent Systems, pages 382–396. Springer Nature Switzerland. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-45368-7_25.
Pantoja, C. E., Stabile, M. F., Lazarin, N. M., and Sichman, J. S. (2016). Argo: An extended jason architecture that facilitates embedded robotic agents programming. In Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, pages 136–155, Cham. Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50983-9_8.
Santos, K., Costa, D., Lazarin, N., Freitas, B., and Pantoja, C. (2025). The BIG Agent: The Utilization of Embedded Multi-Agent Systems in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Autonomous Operations. In WESAAC 2025. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2025.37556.
Sichman, J. S., Demazeau, Y., and Boissier, O. (1992). When can knowledge-based systems be called agents? In SBIA’92, volume 9, pages 172–185, Rio de Janeiro. SBC. [link].
Song, I. and Piggott, P. (2003). Modelling Message Handling System. In AI 2003, pages 53–64. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-24581-0_5.
Urlings, P., Sioutis, C., Tweedale, J., Ichalkaranje, N., and Jain, L. (2005). A future framework for interfacing BDI agents in a real-time teaming environment. JNCA, 29(2-3). DOI: 10.1016/j.jnca.2004.10.005.
Wooldridge, M. (1999). Intelligent Agents. In Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pages 27–77. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Berger, A. and Pesty, S. (2005). Towards a Conversational Language for Artificial Agents in Mixed Community. In CEEMAS 2005. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/11559221_4.
Bordini, R. H. and Hübner, J. F. (2006). BDI Agent Programming in AgentSpeak Using Jason. In CLIMA 2005. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/11750734_9.
Bratman, M. E., Israel, D. J., and Pollack, M. E. (1988). Plans and resource-bounded practical reasoning. Computational Intelligence, 4(3):349–355. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8640.1988.tb00284.x.
Cardoso, R. C. and Ferrando, A. (2021). A Review of Agent-Based Programming for Multi-Agent Systems. Computers, 10(2):16. DOI: 10.3390/computers10020016.
Chang, Y., Li, Z., Lee, S., Park, J., and Yun, H. (2024). Exploring Human-AI Companion Dynamics: The Interplay between Chatbots and Users. In PACIS 2024 Proceedings. AIS Electronic Library. Available at: [link].
Chin, H., Zhunis, A., and Cha, M. (2024). Behaviors and Perceptions of Human-Chatbot Interactions Based on Top Active Users of a Commercial Social Chatbot. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW2):1–28. DOI: 10.1145/3687022.
De Silva, L., Meneguzzi, F., and Logan, B. (2020). BDI agent architectures: a survey. In IJCAI’20. ACM. URL: [link].
Endler, M., Baptista, G., Silva, L. D., Vasconcelos, R., Malcher, M., Pantoja, V., Pinheiro, V., and Viterbo, J. (2011). ContextNet: Context Reasoning and Sharing Middleware for Large-Scale Pervasive Collaboration and Social Networking. In PDT ’11, New York, NY, USA. ACM. DOI: 10.1145/2088960.2088962.
Finin, T., Fritzson, R., McKay, D., and McEntire, R. (1994). KQML as an agent communication language. In CIKM ’94, pages 456–463, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. ACM Press. DOI: 10.1145/191246.191322.
Flathmann, C., McNeese, N., and Canonico, L. B. (2019). Using Human-Agent Teams to Purposefully Design Multi-Agent Systems. Proceedings of the HFES Annual Meeting, 63(1):1425–1429. DOI: 10.1177/1071181319631238.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., and Pantoja, C. (2023). Uma Proposta de Emulador de Portas Seriais para Sistemas Multiagentes Embarcados. In Anais do XVII WESAAC, pages 55–66, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2023.33437.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., Pantoja, C., Jatoba, N., Pinto, V., and Viterbo, J. (2025a). A Migration Control Approach to Improve Security for Open MAS in IoT Networks. In PAAMS 2025. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-07638-0_21.
Freitas, B., Lazarin, N., Pantoja, C., and Viterbo, J. (2025b). Integrating Simulated Exogenous Environments to Support the Learning Process of the Embedded MAS Approach. In WEI 2025. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wei.2025.9115.
Gatti, A., Mascardi, V., and Ferrando, A. (2025). ChatBDI: Think BDI, Talk LLM. In Proceedings of the 24th AAMAS, page 2541–2543, Richland, SC. IFAAMAS. URL: [link].
Goel, P. and Ganatra, A. (2021). A Survey on Chatbot: Futuristic Conversational Agent for User Interaction. In ICSPC 2021, pages 736–740, Coimbatore, India. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICSPC51351.2021.9451763.
Hanna, N. and Richards, D. (2014). Human-agent teamwork in collaborative virtual environments. In AAMAS 2014, pages 1735–1736. IFAAMAS. URL: [link].
Jesus, V. S. d., Pantoja, C., Manoel, F., Alves, G., Viterbo, J., and Bezerra, E. (2021). Bio-Inspired Protocols for Embodied Multi-Agent Systems. In ICAART 2021, pages 312–320. SciTePress. DOI: 10.5220/0010257803120320.
Johnson, P. and Johnson, H. (2001). Interaction, collaboration and communication: A human-computer interaction perspective. In ACCOLADE: ARCHITECTURE, COLLABORATION, DESIGN, pages 43–58, NETHERLANDS. DELFT. URL: [link].
Lazarin, N. M., de Souza, J. P. B., Pantoja, C. E., Alexandre, T., and Viterbo, J. (2025). Human and BDI-Agent Interaction via KQML Messages over IMAP and SMTP. In PAAMS 2024. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-70415-4_15.
Lazarin, N. M., Pantoja, C. E., and Viterbo, J. (2024). Dealing with the Unpredictability of Physical Resources in Real-World Multi-agent Systems. In Agents and Artificial Intelligence, pages 48–71, Cham. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-55326-4_3.
Lewis, M. (1998). Designing for Human-Agent Interaction. AI Magazine, 19(2):67. DOI: 10.1609/aimag.v19i2.1369.
Lira, L., Serafim, A., Lazarin, N., Freitas, B., and Pantoja, C. (2025). BusAI: An BDI-agent-based Urban Transport Information System. In WESAAC 2025, pages 137–144. SBC. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2025.37550.
Ltifi, M. (2023). Trust in the chatbot: a semi-human relationship. Future Business Journal, 9(1):109. DOI: 10.1186/s43093-023-00288-z.
Michel, O. (1998). Webots: Symbiosis Between Virtual and Real Mobile Robots. In VW 1998. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-68686-X_24.
Pantoja, C. E., Jesus, V. S. d., Lazarin, N. M., and Viterbo, J. (2023). A Spin-off Version of Jason for IoT and Embedded Multi-Agent Systems. In Intelligent Systems, pages 382–396. Springer Nature Switzerland. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-45368-7_25.
Pantoja, C. E., Stabile, M. F., Lazarin, N. M., and Sichman, J. S. (2016). Argo: An extended jason architecture that facilitates embedded robotic agents programming. In Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, pages 136–155, Cham. Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50983-9_8.
Santos, K., Costa, D., Lazarin, N., Freitas, B., and Pantoja, C. (2025). The BIG Agent: The Utilization of Embedded Multi-Agent Systems in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Autonomous Operations. In WESAAC 2025. DOI: 10.5753/wesaac.2025.37556.
Sichman, J. S., Demazeau, Y., and Boissier, O. (1992). When can knowledge-based systems be called agents? In SBIA’92, volume 9, pages 172–185, Rio de Janeiro. SBC. [link].
Song, I. and Piggott, P. (2003). Modelling Message Handling System. In AI 2003, pages 53–64. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-24581-0_5.
Urlings, P., Sioutis, C., Tweedale, J., Ichalkaranje, N., and Jain, L. (2005). A future framework for interfacing BDI agents in a real-time teaming environment. JNCA, 29(2-3). DOI: 10.1016/j.jnca.2004.10.005.
Wooldridge, M. (1999). Intelligent Agents. In Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pages 27–77. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Publicado
19/10/2026
Como Citar
SALDANHA, Gustavo; FAÇANHA, Mateus; SANTOS, Kauã; ALEXANDRE, Tielle; FREITAS, Bruno; LAZARIN, Nilson; PANTOJA, Carlos.
Messenger BDI: An Human and Cognitive Agent Communication approach over KQML. In: WORKSHOP-ESCOLA DE SISTEMAS DE AGENTES, SEUS AMBIENTES E APLICAÇÕES (WESAAC), 20. , 2026, Cuiabá/MT.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2026
.
p. 193-203.
ISSN 2326-5434.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wesaac.2026.31733.
