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. CAMP-BDI (Capability Aware, Maintaining Plans) 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 decentralized, 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.