An interactive planner for open systems

The authors present a cooperative and interactive planning system called VIPS (Visual Interactive Planning System). They argue that it is not meaningful to automate the planning process in an open system like the office world and propose the paradigm of a cooperative planner. They give a solution for the problem of describing planning goals in open systems. The goal itself and the plan are specified by a graphical net language, which can be simulated to generate problem solving action sequences. A description is given of the planning paradigm, the hybrid knowledge base, and the net model. An example demonstrates how the planner works