A Bias towards Relevance: Recognizing Plans where Goal Minimization Fails

Abigail S. Gertner, Bonnie L. Webber

Abstract: Domains such as multiple trauma management, in which there are multiple interacting goals that change over time, are ones in which plan recognition's standard inductive bias towards a single explanatory goal is inappropriate. In this paper we define and argue for an alternative bias based on identifying contextually "relevant" goals. We support this claim by showing how a complementary planning system in Traum AID 2.0, a decision-support system for the management of multiple trauma, allows us to define a four-level scale of relevance and therefore, of measurable deviations from relevance. This in turn allows definition of a bias towards relevance in the incremental recognition of physician plans by Traum-AID's critiquing interface, TraumaTIQ.