Authors:
Ronan Killough
;
Kim Bauters
;
Kevin McAreavey
;
Weiru Liu
and
Jun Hong
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Online Planning, BDI Agent, Risk Awareness, Decision Making.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Autonomous Systems
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Formal Methods
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Planning and Scheduling
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Uncertainty in AI
Abstract:
The ability of an autonomous agent to select rational actions is vital in enabling it to achieve its goals. To do so effectively in a high-stakes setting, the agent must be capable of considering the risk and potential reward of both immediate and future actions. In this paper we provide a novel method for calculating risk alongside utility in online planning algorithms. We integrate such a risk-aware planner with a BDI agent, allowing us to build agents that can set their risk aversion levels dynamically based on their changing beliefs about the environment. To guide the design of a risk-aware agent we propose a number of principles which such an agent should adhere to and show how our proposed framework satisfies these principles. Finally, we evaluate our approach and demonstrate that a dynamically risk-averse agent is capable of achieving a higher success rate than an agent that ignores risk, while obtaining a higher utility than an agent with a static risk attitude.