MACBeth: A Multi-Agent Constraint-Based Planner
Robert P. Goldman, Karen Zita Haigh, David J. Musliner, Michael Pelican
Honeywell Technology Center, Minneapolis, MN
2000 AAAI workshop "Constraints and AI Planning", pages 11-17
MACBeth is a multi-agent constraint-based tactical
planning engine. It is designed for domains in which a time-pressured
human user, such as a pilot or soldier, must quickly customize a mission
for a team of autonomous agents. Through a playbook graphical user
interface, the human user communicates instructions to the planner in the
form of desired goals, tasks, partial plans or constraints. MACBeth
evaluates these instructions for feasibility and correctness, and expands
and refines them to produce fully executable plans. In tactical planning,
the difficulty lies in how to apply familiar methods to novel situations,
how to coordinate multiple agents so that the methods are carried off
successfully, and how to manage limited resources. MACBeth directly
addresses these issues, and has been used in two robotics domains:
Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) sorties and Tactical Mobile
Robotics (TMR) deployment. MACBeth provides the essential planning
capabilities for these demanding domains.