Controlling for Unexpected Goals when Planning in a Mixed-Initiative Setting

A mixed-initiative setting is where both human and machine are intimately involved in the planning process. We have identified a number of challenges that occur for traditional planning frameworks as humans are allowed more latitude. In this paper we will examine the types of unexpected goals that may be given to the underlying planning system and thereby how humans change the way planning must be performed. Users may want to achieve goals in terms of actions as well as states, they may specify goals that vary along a dimension of abstraction and specificity, and they may mix both top-level goals and subgoals when describing what they want a plan to do. We show how the Prodigy planning system has met these challenges when integrated with a force deployment tool called ForMAT and describe what opportunities this poses for a generative planning framework.