Dynamic cooperation using resource based planning

In multi-agent planning, cooperation is a crucial interaction to reduce plan costs and complexities in order to satisfy non-conflicting goals. However, it is not generally natural to sacrifice from the autonomy of agents by letting agents share all of their local plans. Resource based planning is a planning framework similar to logic based planning based on resources and skills that map to states and actions of world state. Resource based planning is very functional in processing plan elements to find cooperation schemas. In this work we extended the simple resource based plan coordination method proposed by Tonino, et al [2]. Our framework provides not only a basis for modifying plan elements, but also functionality for manipulating plans dynamically. A negotiation algorithm using a resource based perspective provides the necessary ground for forming cooperation among agents. We illustrated the effectiveness of the proposed method on a modified postman domain, where agents try to minimize the cost of delivering the letters they are assigned.