Speculative planning with delegation

This paper presents a novel method of collaborative problem solving for intelligent agents in virtual environments. We describe a planner for STRIPS-like domains enhanced by techniques of "delegated computing". Instead of having one central planner with complete information about the world, the concept of delegation is used. In this way, we achieve agent collaboration in a dynamic system, where each of the agents has its own partial plan, but the plans are implicitly coordinated towards a common goal. We demonstrate these techniques in a virtual reality simulation with virtual humans solving a logistical problem.