Affiliations: [a] Department of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil. ignasi@ime.usp.br, leliane@ime.usp.br | [b] Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil. kvd@usp.br
Correspondence:
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Address for correspondence: Department of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil
Abstract: Contingent planning models a robot that must achieve a goal in a partially observable environment with non-deterministic actions. A solution for this problem is generated by searching in the space of belief states, where a belief state is a set of possible world states. However, if there is an unavoidable dead-end state, the robot will fail to accomplish his task. In this work, rather than limiting a contingent planning task to the agent’s actions and observations, we model a planning agent that is able to proactively resort to humans for help in order to complete tasks that would be unsolvable otherwise. Our aim is to develop a symbiotic autonomous agent, that is, an agent that, proactively and autonomously, asks for human help when needed. We formalize this problem and propose an extension of a translation technique to convert the contingent planning problem with human help into a non-deterministic fully observable planning problem that can be solved by an off-the-shelf efficient FOND planner.
