A preference-based theory of intention

Although there has been much work on the logical formulation of intention, only little attention has been paid on the close relationship between intentions and preferences of an agent. As a result, the previous work cannot properly treat reasoning with information about preferences. In this paper, we investigate a preference-based approach to the logic of intention. Based on an intuition that intentions are desirable choices of an agent, we define a notion of intention in terms of the preference order of an agent. The definition is a simple and intuitive one, and intentions satisfy good and interesting properties. Then we apply our logic to the intention recognition problem. Based on our preference-based definition of intention, we give several sufficient conditions on preferences of an agent under which the action-effect heuristic rule is valid. In this way, we demonstrate that our formalism can give a good basis for designing and understanding heuristics and control strategies for them in the intention recognition domain.