Dynamic goal decomposition and planning in MAS for Highly Changing Environments

This paper studies the problem of dynamic goal decomposition and planning in scenarios characterized by a strong inter-dependency between action and context, for instance those related to rescue intervention in a territory upon occurrence of some kind of catastrophic event. We propose an architecture that integrates DALI MASs (DALI Multi-Agent Systems) and ASP (Answer Set Programming) modules for reaching goals in a flexible and timely way, where DALI is a computational-logic-based fully implemented agent-oriented logic programming language and ASP modules allow for affordable and flexible planning capabilities. The proposed DALI MAS architecture exploits these modules for flexible goal decomposition and planning with the possibility to select plans according to a suite of possible preferences and to re-plan upon need. We present a case-study concerning DALI agents which cooperate for exploring an unknown territory under changing circumstances in an optimal or at least sub-optimal fashion. The architecture can be exploited not only by DALI agents, but rather by any kind of logical agent.