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From: jair-ed@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: New Article, 2Planning for Contingencies: A ...
Message-ID: <1996May11.012756.20896@ptolemy-ethernet.arc.nasa.gov>
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Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 01:27:56 GMT
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JAIR is pleased to announce the publication of the following article:

Pryor, L. and Collins, G. (1996)
  "Planning for Contingencies: A Decision-based Approach", 
   Volume 4, pages 287-339.

   Available in HTML, Postscript (544K) and compressed Postscript (239K).
   For quick access via your WWW browser, use this URL:
     http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/jair/abstracts/pryor96a.html
   More detailed instructions are below.

   Abstract: A fundamental assumption made by classical AI planners is
   that there is no uncertainty in the world: the planner has full
   knowledge of the conditions under which the plan will be executed and
   the outcome of every action is fully predictable.  These planners
   cannot therefore construct contingency plans, i.e., plans in which
   different actions are performed in different circumstances.  In this
   paper we discuss some issues that arise in the representation and
   construction of contingency plans and describe Cassandra, a
   partial-order contingency planner.  Cassandra uses explicit
   decision-steps that enable the agent executing the plan to decide
   which plan branch to follow.  The decision-steps in a plan result in
   subgoals to acquire knowledge, which are planned for in the same way
   as any other subgoals.  Cassandra thus distinguishes the process of
   gathering information from the process of making decisions.  The
   explicit representation of decisions in Cassandra allows a coherent
   approach to the problems of contingent planning, and provides a solid
   base for extensions such as the use of different decision-making
   procedures.

The article is available via:
   
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    For direct access to this article and related files try:
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 -- Anonymous FTP from either of the two sites below.

    Carnegie-Mellon University (USA):
	ftp://p.gp.cs.cmu.edu/usr/jair/pub/volume4/pryor96a.ps
    The University of Genoa (Italy):
	ftp://ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it/pub/jair/pub/volume4/pryor96a.ps

    The compressed PostScript file is named pryor96a.ps.Z (239K)

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