Information Gathering Plans With Sensing Actions

1 I n t r o d u c t i o n I n f o r m a t i o n ga the r ing agents are p r o g r a m s t h a t answer queries us ing a large n u m b e r of diverse i n fo rma t ion sources (e.g., sources on the In te rne t , c o m p a n y wide da t abases ) . These in fo rma t ion sources do not belong to the agent , i n s t ead they are p rov ided by au tonomous sources, poss ib ly for a fee. An i n f o r m a t i o n agent does no t m a i n t a i n any reM da ta , b u t only has models of the con ten t s of the ava i lab le i n fo rma t ion sources. An agent has a d o m a i n m o d e l of i ts a r ea of exper t i se and a descr ip t ion of how the contents of an i n fo rma t ion source re la te * The first and second authors are supported in part by Rome Laboratory of the Air Force Systems Command and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract no. F30602-94-C-0210, and in part by the University of Southern California Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) a NSF Engineering Research Center. The views and conclusions contained in this paper are the author's and should not be interpreted as representing the official opinion or policy of DARPA, RL, IMSC, AT&T Labs, or any person or agency connected with them.