Augmenting BDI Agents with Deliberative Planning Techniques

Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents are well suited for autonomous applications in dynamic environments. Their precompiled plan schemata contain the procedural knowledge of an agent and contribute to the performance. The agents generally are constrained to a fixed set of action patterns. Their choice depends on current goals, not on the future of the environment. Planning techniques can provide dynamic plans regarding the predicted state of the environment. We augment a BDI framework with a state-based planner for operational planning in domains where BDI is not well applicable. For this purpose, the requirements for the planner and for the coupling with a BDI system are investigated. An approach is introduced where a BDI system takes responsibility for plan monitoring and re-planning and the planner for the creation of plans. A fast state-based planner utilizing domain specific control knowledge retains the responsiveness of the system. In order to facilitate integration with BDI systems programmed in object-oriented languages, the planning problem is adopted into the BDI conceptual space with object-based domain models. The application of the hybrid system is illustrated using a propositional puzzle and a multi agent coordination scenario.

[1]  Richard Fikes,et al.  STRIPS: A New Approach to the Application of Theorem Proving to Problem Solving , 1971, IJCAI.

[2]  Amy L. Lansky,et al.  Reactive Reasoning and Planning , 1987, AAAI.

[3]  Michael E. Bratman,et al.  Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason , 1991 .

[4]  David J. Israel,et al.  Plans and resource‐bounded practical reasoning , 1988, Comput. Intell..

[5]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages: A Survey , 1995, ECAI Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages.

[6]  Jörg P. Müller,et al.  Unifying Control in a Layered Agent Architecture , 2011, ICMAS.

[7]  Paolo Busetta,et al.  Jack intelligent agents - components for intelligent agents in java , 1998 .

[8]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  The Belief-Desire-Intention Model of Agency , 1998, ATAL.

[9]  Félix Ingrand,et al.  Propice-Plan: Toward a Unified Framework for Planning and Execution , 1999, ECP.

[10]  Daniel S. Weld.  Recent Advances in AI Planning , 1999, AI Mag..

[11]  Helder Coelho,et al.  BDI models and systems : Reducing the gap , 1999 .

[12]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  The control of reasoning in resource-bounded agents , 2001, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[13]  Dana S. Nau,et al.  SHOP2: An HTN Planning System , 2003, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[14]  Jonas Kvarnström,et al.  TALplanner in the Third International Planning Competition: Extensions and Control Rules , 2003, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[15]  Lin Padgham,et al.  A Comparison of BDI Based Real-Time Reasoning and HTN Based Planning , 2004, Australian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

[16]  Avelino Francisco Zorzo,et al.  Propositional planning in BDI agents , 2004, SAC '04.

[17]  Xinghuo Yu,et al.  AI 2004: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, 17th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cairns, Australia, December 4-6, 2004, Proceedings , 2004, Australian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

[18]  Daniel Moldt,et al.  Goal Representation for BDI Agent Systems , 2004, PROMAS.

[19]  Paolo Traverso,et al.  Automated planning - theory and practice , 2004 .

[20]  Paolo Traverso,et al.  Automated Planning: Theory & Practice , 2004 .

[21]  Andrea Omicini,et al.  Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Nicosia, Cyprus, March 14-17, 2004 , 2004, SAC.

[22]  Lin Padgham,et al.  Planning on demand in BDI systems , 2005 .

[23]  David Stuart Robertson,et al.  Enacting the Distributed Business Workflows Using BPEL4WS on the Multi-agent Platform , 2005, MATES.

[24]  Aleksander Walczak,et al.  Planning and the belief-desire-intention model of agency , 2005 .

[25]  Winfried Lamersdorf,et al.  Jadex: A BDI Reasoning Engine , 2005, Multi-Agent Programming.

[26]  Winfried Lamersdorf,et al.  A Goal Deliberation Strategy for BDI Agent Systems , 2005, MATES.