Multiagent evacuation planning by distributed constraint satisfaction

A multiagent planning method is proposed, in which the agents´ intentions are identified in the individual plans, and the plans are coordinated to be integrated into a consistent total plan under consideration of the intention. The intention identification process is modeled as a distributed constraint satisfaction process. The model is represented as a predicate transition-net, a kind of high level Petri net. The proposed method is applied to an evacuation planning problem from a building under an emergent fire situation. The coordination process of the individual plans is implemented by the parallel processing language Occam. The gradual and event-driven manner of the process yields the flexibility and transparency of the planning method