A Theory of Action for MultiAgent Planning (original) (raw)

1988, Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence

A theory of action suitable for reasoning about events in multiagent or dynamically changing environments is prescntcrl. A device called a process model is used to represent the observable behavior of an agent in performing an action. This model is more general than previous models of act ion, allowing sequencing, selection, nondeterminism, iteration, and parallelism to be represented. It is shown how this model can be utilized in synthesizing plans and reasoning about concurrency. In parbicular, conditions are derived for determining whether or not concurrent actions are free from mutual interference. It is also indicated how this theory pro!.ides a basis for understanding and reasoning about act,ion sentences in both natural and programming lariguagcs. 'Allen [2] proposes a method for forming multiagent plans that is based on his representation of actions. However, he does not use the temporal logic directly, and actions are restricted to a particularly simple form (e.g., they do not include conditionals).

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