Distributed Planning through Graph Merging

In this paper, we introduce a generic and fresh model for distributed planning called “Distributed Planning Through Graph Merging” (DPGM). This model unifies the different steps of the distributed planning process into a single step. Our approach is based on a planning graph structure for the agent reasoning and a CSP mechanism for the individual plan extraction and the coordination. We assume that no agent can reach the global goal alone. Therefore the agents must cooperate, i.e., take in into account potential positive interactions between their activities to reach their common shared goal. The originality of our model consists in considering as soon as possible, i.e., in the individual planning process, the positive and the negative interactions between agents activities in order to reduce the search cost of a global coordinated solution plan.