Planning to Avoid Side Effects

In sequential decision making, objective specifications are often underspecified or incomplete, neglecting to take into account potential (negative) side effects. In this paper we investigate how to avoid side effects in a classical planning setting. We formalize several versions of side-effectminimizing objectives for use in classical planning. We also study the notion of minimizing side effects in the context of a planning environment where multiple independent agents co-exist in a shared environment. We consider how side effects may compromise or prevent agents in the shared environment from achieving goals or executing plans that they would have otherwise been able to achieve, had the acting agent not executed their plan, and propose means to generate plans that minimize such negative side effects. Finally, we show how side-effect-minimizing plans can be computed via STRIPS planning with soft goals.