A Framework for Plan Library Evolution in BDI Agent Systems

Xu, M. , Bauters, K., McAreavey, K. and Liu, W. (2018) A Framework for Plan Library Evolution in BDI Agent Systems. In: 2018 IEEE 30th International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), Volos, Greece, 05-07 Nov 2018, pp. 414-421. ISBN 9781538674499 (doi: 10.1109/ICTAI.2018.00071)

Abstract

The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm is a flexible framework for representing intelligent agents. Practical BDI agent systems rely on a static plan library to reduce the planning problem to the simpler problem of plan selection. However, fixed pre-defined plan libraries are unable to adapt to fast-changing environments pervaded by uncertainty. In this paper, we advance the state-of-the-art in BDI agent systems by proposing a plan library evolution architecture with mechanisms to incorporate new plans (plan expansion) and drop old/unsuitable plans (plan contraction) to adapt to changes in a realistic environment. The proposal follows a principled approach to define plan library expansion and contraction operators, motivated by postulates that clearly highlight the underlying assumptions, and quantified by decision-support measures of temporal information. In particular, we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed contraction operator by presenting a multi-criteria argumentation based decision making to remove plans exemplified in a planetary vehicle scenario.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Xu, Dr Mengwei
• Authors: Xu, M., Bauters, K., McAreavey, K., and Liu, W.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• ISSN: 2375-0197
• ISBN: 9781538674499