Primary and secondary diagnosis of multi-agent plan execution

• Published in: Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 267 - 294
• Main Authors: de Jonge, Femke, Roos, Nico, Witteveen, Cees
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.04.2009
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Diagnosis; Planning; Multi-agent systems
• ISSN: 1387-2532; 1573-7454
• DOI: 10.1007/s10458-008-9045-x

Diagnosis of plan failures is an important subject in both single- and multi-agent planning. Plan diagnosis can be used to deal with plan failures in three ways: (i) to provide information necessary for the adjustment of the current plan or for the development of a new plan, (ii) to point out which equipment and/or agents should be repaired or adjusted to avoid further violation of the plan execution, and (iii) to identify the agents responsible for plan-execution failures. We introduce two general types of plan diagnosis: primary plan diagnosis identifying the incorrect or failed execution of actions, and secondary plan diagnosis that identifies the underlying causes of the faulty actions. Furthermore, three special cases of secondary plan diagnosis are distinguished, namely agent diagnosis , equipment diagnosis and environment diagnosis .