Plan representation and execution in multi-actor scenarios by means of social commitments

Abstract

We present an approach to plan representation in multi-actor scenarios that is suitable for flexible replanning and plan revision purposes in dynamic non-deterministic multi-actor environments. The key idea of the presented approach is in representation of the distributed hierarchical plan by social commitments, as a theoretically studied formalism representing mutual relations among intentions of collaborating agents. The article presents a formal model of a recursive form of commitments and discusses how it can be deployed to a selected hierarchical planning scenario. The decommitment rules definition and their influence on the plan execution robustness and stability is also presented. The approach was verified and evaluated in a simulated environment. The experimental validation confirms the performance, stability, and robustness of the system in complex scenarios.