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A Markov Decision Problem Approach to Goal Attainment.
- Source :
- IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics: Part A; Jan2008, Vol. 38 Issue 1, p116-132, 7p, 4 Black and White Photographs, 6 Diagrams, 15 Charts, 2 Graphs
- Publication Year :
- 2008
-
Abstract
- A new Markov decision problem (MDP)-based method for managing goal attaimnent (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, 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10834427
- Volume :
- 38
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics: Part A
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 28437739
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCA.2007.909502