A Comparison of BDI Based Real-Time Reasoning and

The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model of agency is an architecture based on Bratman's theory of practical reasoning. A convenient and accepted representation of the BDI architecture is in terms of goals and plans. In this representation, an agent achieves a goal by selecting and executing plans from a predefined plan library created by the programmer. The BDI architecture is therefore a real-time reasoning and execution system that works in complex environments with predefined plans. Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) decomposition on the other hand is a planning technique which has its roots in classical planning systems such as STRIPS. Although HTN systems belong to the planning literature, they do not create new plans from first principles as STRIPS style planners do, but instead create complete solutions by using partial solutions provided by the programmer. Despite being used for different purposes, HTN and BDI systems appear to have a lot of similarities in the problem solving approaches they adopt