Towards a Theory for Multiparty Proactive Communication in Agent Teams

Helping behavior in effective teams is achieved via some overlapping “shared mental models” that are developed and maintained by members of the team. In this paper, we take the perspective that multiparty “proactive” communication is critical for establishing and maintaining such a shared mental model among teammates, which is the basis for agents to offer proactive help and to achieve coherent teamwork. We first provide formal semantics for multiparty proactive performatives within a team setting. We then examine how such performatives result in updates to mental model of teammates, and how such updates can trigger helpful behaviors from other teammates. We also provide conversation policies for multiparty proactive performatives.