Thomas Bolander (Technical University of Denmark)
Thorsten Engesser (University of Freiburg)
Robert Mattmüller (University of Freiburg)
Sheila McIlraith (University of Toronto)
Date: Monday 19 October 2020 6 PM – 9 PM UTC
Introduction. Automated planning is of central concern in high-level symbolic AI research, with applications in logistics, robotics and service composition. Epistemic planning is the enrichment of automated planning with epistemic notions, including knowledge and beliefs, which not only refer to incomplete knowledge, but also beliefs about this knowledge. In general, single-agent epistemic planning considers the following problem: given my current state of knowledge, and a desirable state of knowledge, how do I get from one to the other? In multi-agent epistemic planning, the current and desirable states of knowledge might also refer to the states of knowledge of other agents, including higher-order knowledge like ensuring that agent a doesn’t get to know that agent b knows p.
Single-agent epistemic planning is of central importance in settings where agents need to be able to reason about their own lack of knowledge and e.g. make plans of how to achieve the required knowledge. Multi-agent epistemic planning is essential for coordination and collaboration in multi-agent systems, where success can only be expected if agents are able to reason about the knowledge, uncertainty and capabilities of other agents. It is a relatively recent area of research, and is inherently multi-disciplinary involving the areas of automated planning, epistemic logic, and knowledge representation & reasoning. In order to achieve formalisms and systems for epistemic planning that are both expressive and practically efficient, it is necessary to combine state of the art from all three areas.
How to join the tutorial. As announced by the organisers, we strongly encourage people to participate via gather.town (https://gather.town/Z1SdmgDu1rDoaMlD/ICAPS2020), using the password you received with your registration. In gather.town, you can navigate your avatar to the Tutorials area, and then enter the EpiP (Epistemic Planning) area. First you will reach the main/break area of EpiP, and from there you can enter the room where it says “Talks”. Inside you will find a Zoom link to the tutorial.
Program. The tutorial will be late evening for more than one third of the participants, which could be a bit challenging. We therefore aim for only spending 2.5 out of the 3 hours. To keep the tutorial short, there will be no time scheduled for Q&A, but you are encouraged to write your questions in the Zoom chat at any time during the tutorial, and then we will try to answer as quickly as possible through the chat.
First Hour:
– Introductory Remarks
– Sheila McIlraith: Introduction to Epistemic Logic and Epistemic Planning
– Thomas Bolander: Video Demonstration – Human-Robot Collaboration Using Epistemic Planning
– Sheila McIlraith: Formula-Based (Syntactic) Approaches to Epistemic Planning
— 10 minute break —
Second Hour:
– Thomas Bolander: Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL)
– Thomas Bolander: DEL-based (Semantic) Approaches to Epistemic Planning
— 10 minute break —
Third Half Hour:
– Robert Mattmüller: Implicit Coordination (in DEL) and Plan Execution
– Robert Mattmüller: DEL and Games/GDL-III
If you prefer not to use gather.town or it somehow fails, you can join the tutorial directly on Zoom using the meeting ID that has been sent to all participants via email. In that case, make sure to first log out of gather.town.
Slides.