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Automated Planning and BDI Agents: A Case Study

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Book cover Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Social Good. The PAAMS Collection (PAAMS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12946))

Abstract

There have been many attempts to integrate automated planning and rational agents. Most of the research focuses on adding support directly within agent programming languages, such as those based on the Belief-Desire-Intention model, rather than using off-the-shelf planners. This approach is often believed to improve the computation time, which is a common requirement in real world applications. This paper shows that even in complex scenarios, such as in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest with 50 agents and a 4 s deadline for the agents to send actions to the server, it is possible to efficiently integrate agent languages with off-the-shelf automated planners. Based on the experience with this case study, the paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of decoupling the agents from the planners.

Work supported by UK Research and Innovation, and EPSRC Hubs for “Robotics and AI in Hazardous Environments”: EP/R026092 (FAIR-SPACE) and EP/R026084 (RAIN). Cardoso’s work is also supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Chairs in Emerging Technologies scheme.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://multiagentcontest.org/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.fast-downward.org/.

  3. 3.

    http://jacamo.sourceforge.net/.

  4. 4.

    https://multiagentcontest.org/2020/.

  5. 5.

    Our team code for the 14\(^{th}\) MAPC:

    https://github.com/autonomy-and-verification-uol/mapc2019-liv

    Our team code for the 15\(^{th}\) MAPC:

    https://github.com/autonomy-and-verification-uol/mapc2020-lfc.

  6. 6.

    Please note that cells to the north and to the west of cell (0, 0) have negative values, while cells to the south and to the east have positive values.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Rafael C. Cardoso

  2. University of Genova, 16145, Genova, Italy

    Angelo Ferrando

  3. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

    Fabio Papacchini

Authors
  1. Rafael C. Cardoso
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  2. Angelo Ferrando
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  3. Fabio Papacchini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael C. Cardoso .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Frank Dignum

  2. Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Juan Manuel Corchado

  3. University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Fernando De La Prieta

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Cardoso, R.C., Ferrando, A., Papacchini, F. (2021). Automated Planning and BDI Agents: A Case Study. In: Dignum, F., Corchado, J.M., De La Prieta, F. (eds) Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Social Good. The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12946. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85739-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85739-4_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85738-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85739-4

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