Robot plans and human plans: implications for models of communications

Plans and Communication This paper examines the role of plan recognition and plan generation in communication. It argues that people in interaction with others organize their perceptions of a social situation in terms of plans even when the others' plans are poorly formulated. They use their models of others' plans in formulating their own. Much of what occurs in discourse centers on a continual communication about and reformulation of one's own plans and one's L.Jdels of others' plans. Formal methods for describing and analyzing plans are now available. Such methods allow us to be more explicit in our hypotheses about social interaction. Unfortunately, the classical formalisms for planning are derived from a robot world model that fails generalize Sufficiently to account for typical human planning situations. By pushing the classical model we come to a model of planning that embodies concepts such as mutual belief, social episode; and goal conflict. Using the mutual belief model we look at a simple dialogue. It is clear from the analysis that elements of the model are necessary for modeling such dialogues; but not sufficient. More complex dialogues and texts will undoubtedly require further elaboration of the model; Plans and Communication 3 Robot Plans and Human Plans: Implications for Models of Communication The Peanuts comic strip has a character named Lucy who is always trying to take advantage of one named Charlie Brown. Because Charlie is very trusting, her tricks often succeed. One of her favorite tricks occurs in the fall when football season is getting underway: Lucy holds a football and says, "Come on Charlie Brown! I'll hold the football for you. You come and kick it." Charlie runs as fast as he can, swings his leg back and tries to kick the ball. At the last second Lucy yanks the ball away; Charlie's feet fly up in the air and he Lands on his back; His pride is wounded as well as his bottom. One year; Charlie started thinking; "She says she's going co hold the ball so I can run up and kick it; but I know she's going to pull it away. She always pulls it away. She thinks that I don't know what she's planning to do, but, in fact, I do. I also know that she thinks that I don't know. I'm going to trick her. Instead of running up and kicking the ball I'll just run up and stop. Then she can't pull the ball away and make me fall on