POMDP (Partially Observable Markov Decision Process) is a mathematical framework that models planning under uncertainty. Solving a POMDP is an intractable problem and even the state of the art POMDP solvers are too computationally expensive for large domains. This is a major bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic, called the pairwise heuristic, that can be used in a one-step greedy strategy to find a near optimal solution for POMDP problems very quickly. This approach is a good candidate for large problems where real-time solution is a necessity but exact optimality of the solution is not vital. The pairwise heuristic uses the optimal solutions for pairs of states. For each pair of states in the POMDP, we find the optimal sequence of actions to resolve the uncertainty and to maximize the reward, given that the agent is uncertain about which state of the pair it is in. Then we use these sequences as a heuristic and find the optimal action in each step of the greedy strategy using this heuristic. We have tested our method on the available large classical test benchmarks in various domains. The resulting total reward is close to, if not greater than, the total reward obtained by other state of the art POMDP solvers, while the time required to find the solution is always much less.

. It is argued that Situated Agents should be designed using a unitaryon-line computational model. The Constraint Net model of Zhang and Mackworth satisfiesthat requirement. Two systems for situated perception built in our laboratory are describedto illustrate the new approach: one for visual monitoring of a robot’s arm, the other forreal-time visual control of multiple robots competing and cooperating in a dynamic world.First proposal for robot soccer.Proc. VI-92, 1992. later published in a book Computer Vision: System, Theory, and Applications, pages 1-13, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1993.

In E. W. Elcock and D. Michie (Eds.), Machine intelligence 8. New York: Wiley.