A temporal argumentation approach to cooperative planning using dialogues

Abstract

In this paper, we study a dialogue-based approach to multi-agent collaborative plan search in the framework of t-DeLP, an extension of DeLP for defeasible temporal reasoning. In t-DeLP programs, temporal facts and defeasible temporal rules combine into arguments, which compare against each other to decide which of their conclusions are to prevail. A backward centralized planning system built on this logical argumentative framework has been already studied in a previous work. In this paper, we consider a distributed collaborative scenario where agents exchange information using suitable dialogues. Agents cooperate to generate arguments and actions (plan steps), and to detect argument threats to plans. We show that the soundness and completeness properties of centralized t-DeLP plan search are preserved. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.