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Under some views, a crucial function for conversation policies is to "constrain the messages that appear on the wire,'' for there can be a many-to-many mapping between an agent's intention and the message primitive used to express that intention. In this paper, we argue that the way to constrain messages is to constrain intentions. We propose a pragmatic approach to doing this through an abstract task specification or model. Abstract task specifications are based on a simple state-space representation for problem formulation, and this representation can be used to delimit the agents' task intentions and discourse intentions. This analysis supports a flexible and pragmatic way of handling "unexpected'' messages by reference to the abstract task specification. We see an abstract task specification as one component of a publicly posted conversation policy. A simple search-assistant agent was implemented within a BDI architecture to illustrate application of these ideas.

This paper describes the results of experiments carried out in order to model the movement of resources round a construction site. The model developed takes into account the accessess provided, the layout of the facilities on the site, the shape of the structural elements and the shape and size of the resources. The results show that it is possible and practical to produce such a model and to use it for planning even complex projects.