Structuring the plan design process as a coordination problem - the paradigm of distributed learning control coordination

Structuring the plan-design process entails investigating design decision making in distributed human-computer systems. The motivation for the research reported here is to develop tools that can improve our ability to foresee and generate coordinated decisions in distributed and cooperative decision-making environments. In this chapter, we set out our detailed research hypotheses and we present a model and tool that learns by interacting with distributed knowledge sources (human or artificial) and uses this knowledge to generate spatial plans. In this context, the generation of spatial plans becomes a process of continuous learning and adaptation based on interaction. Finally, we illustrate some simulations built to test the model in a virtual environment prior to its application within a human-machine decision-making network. We conclude with a discussion of preliminary results and directions for future development