NDLI: A Markov Decision Problem Approach to Goal Attainment

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Meirina, C. Levchuk, Y.N. Levchuk, G.M. Pattipati, K.R.
Copyright Year	1996
Abstract	A new Markov decision problem (MDP)-based method for managing goal attainment (GA), which is the process of planning and controlling actions that are related to the achievement of a set of defined goals in the presence of resource and time constraints, is proposed. Specifically, we address the problem as one of optimally selecting a sequence of actions to transform the system and/or its environment from an initial state to a desired state. We begin with a method of explicitly mapping an action-GA graph to an MDP graph and developing a dynamic programming (DP) recursion to solve the MDP problem. For larger problems having exponential complexity with respect to the number of goals, we propose guided search algorithms such as AO, AO_epsiv, and greedy search techniques, whose search power rests on the efficiency of their heuristic evaluation functions (HEFs). Our contribution in this part stems from the introduction of a new problem-specific HEF to aid the search process. We demonstrate reductions in the computational costs of the proposed techniques through performance comparison with standard DP techniques. We conclude this paper with a method to address situations in which alternative strategies (e.g., second best) are required. The new extended AO* algorithm identifies alternative control sequences for attaining the organizational goals.
Sponsorship	IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society
Starting Page	116
Ending Page	132
Page Count	17
File Size	1588020
File Format	PDF
ISSN	10834427
Volume Number	38
Issue Number	1
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2008-01-01
Publisher Place	U.S.A.
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Resource management Time factors Dynamic programming Art Process planning Computational efficiency Cost function Stochastic processes Scheduling planning and control Action-goal attainment graph dynamic programming extended $\hbox{AO}^{\ast}$ algorithm goal management graph search heuristic evaluation function heuristic search Markov decision problem
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Control and Systems Engineering Information Systems Electrical and Electronic Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Applications Software

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