Interacting with an intelligent planning system using English sentences

An intelligent planning system is an example of a software aid which, although developed by specialists in artificial intelligence, and custonlised for a particular application by knowledge engineers, is intended eventually to be used by non-programmers for a wide variety of tasks. That is, the domain-specific definition of requirements, resources, etc. for a particular application will be specified by people who are trained in their own trade or profession but ‘who are unlikely to be acquainted with the technicalities of automatic planning systems. There is therefore a need for a communication medium which allows the application specialist, and the non-expert user of the eventual domain-tailored system, to specify their needs without howing any of the low-level details of the planning notation or the actual operations of the planning system.