Plan coordination (extended abstract)
Mathijs M. De Weerdt · 2003
Autonomous agents usually plan their actions. Sometimes agents can benet from cooperation, and sometimes they can-not even do without resources from another. We can either coordinate the plans of agents after they have constructed their plans (plan merging), or we can plan the coordination of agents. Plan merging can only be used for agents that are able to (rst) create a valid plan on their own. We distinguish two ways to plan coordination. With service-based plan coordination agents offer resources they can pro-duce for others. With task-based coordination agents are al-lowed to place requests for resources thay need. These forms of coordination can be integrated in the plans, and be realized by adapting existing planning algorithms at a few points. All methods use a model of the state of the world and of actions where a proposition is extended to describe all properties of an available entity relevant for planning. Such a proposition is called a resource, and can be exchanged among plans more conveniently than propositions as used by, e.g., STRIPS. Ac-tions consume all resources that are given as a precondition, and produce the resources dened by the post-condition.