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A multiagent task planning method for agents with disparate capabilities

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Abstract

This paper presents a multiagent task planning method for domains where agents (such as machines and robots) have disparate operational capabilities. The method extends the traditional planning for a solitary agent to handle multiple-agents through a number of novel concepts and planning approaches. The decomposition of the planning problem into subproblems is aimed at achieving plan execution concurrency, and it is based on the assignment of relations (objects may hold in the domain) to agents. A notion of a substate is used to model the plans and actions of the individual agents. To avoid interagent conflicts, interagent constraints provide the coordination between the concurrent actions of the agents and their interactions. Using the substates and the interagent constraints, a decentralised strategy is realised for generating and searching the space of alternative feasible subplans of agents. This strategy is illustrated tith a search space generated for an example problem. The paper also describes the structure of the system used to implement the approach and the concepts.

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Kamel, M., Syed, A. A multiagent task planning method for agents with disparate capabilities. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 9, 408–420 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01748486

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01748486

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