Improving Plan Execution Robustness through Capability Aware Maintenance of Plans by BDI Agents

In a realistic environment, intentions of belief-desire-intention (BDI) agents may be threatened by exogenous change. Subsequent activity failure may incur debilitative consequences that hinder both recovery and subsequent goal achievement. Capability aware, maintaining plans (CAMP-BDI) embodies BDI agents with capability knowledge, allowing anticipation of threats to activity success and stimulating the proactive, preventative modification of intended plans. We describe resultant agent-level algorithms and supporting architecture, including extension to provide decentralised, distributed maintenance through structured messaging. Our results show superior goal achievement to a reactive equivalent in a stochastic environment, increasing with the likelihood of debilitative failure effects. We suggest CAMP-BDI offers a valuable approach towards robustness, particularly in tandem with reactive recovery methods.