This talk will present a theory expressed in first-order logic for describing and supporting inference about action, knowledge, planning, and communication, in an egalitarian multi-agent setting. The underlying ontology of the theory uses a situation-based temporal model and a possible-worlds model of knowledge. It supports plans and communications of a very general kind, both informative communications and requests. The facts that one agent can tell another may refer to states of the world or states of knowledge in the past, present, or future. The same is true of the plans that one agent may request another to execute. We demonstrate that the theory is powerful enough to represent several interesting multi-agent planning problems and to justify their solutions. We have proven that the theory of knowledge, communication, and planning is consistent with a broad range of physical theories, despite the existence of a number of potential paradoxes.

Some of this work has been done in collaboration with Leora Morgenstern.