Glossary: LARA Terms

There are a number of terms and expressions that describe the underlying concept of LARA. In order not to get confused it is a good idea to get familiar with the meaning of these terms.

It is acknowledged that some terms may be inappropriate for certain applications and/or conflict with prevalent norms of nomenclature. In these cases it is a good idea to stick to the more appropriate terms of the field, but link these to LARA terms, e.g. as a footnote.

Decision

A decision is the process an agent performs to end up with none, one, or multiple behavioural options the agent intends to perform.

Associated classes:

  1. LaraDecisionConfiguration

Basic Preferences

Each Agent has a set of basic preferences. A preference value is generally valid for all decisions.

Associated classes:

  1. LaraPrefrence

Situational Preferences

Basic preferences may need to be updated according to situational environmental conditions.

Behavioural Option

Behavioural Options describe the set of options an agent may select upon during its decision making. Behavioural options contain these information:

  • Utility of options with respect to preferences
  • Application range regarding every environmental parameter [TODO]
  • Routine to decide whether the behavioural option is applicable

Another expression is "potential actions".

Decider

The component that is associated with an agent per decision configuration and defines the algorithm of selecting none, one, or multiple behavioural options.

Associated classes:

  1. LaraDecider