The O-Plan system was developed AIAI, University of Edinburgh from 1989 to 1998 as part of DARPA's and Rome Laboratory's Planning Initiative. The aim of the project was to develop an agent architecture which was capable of being instantiated as a planner, execution monitor, task manager, etc.
During its funding by the planning initiative O-Plan was applied to a number of concept demonstrators in the areas of crisis management, logistics management and workflow. O-Plan is widely regarded as one of the best current generation of planners capable of handling real world problems and applications.
Brian Drabble, who was one of O-Plan project's Principal Investigators and its Project Leader, is now a faculty member at CIRL.
Work at CIRL is concentrating on using O-Plan for a number of workflow and planning demonstrations. A number of the core ideas, e.g. hierarchical task refinement and agenda management are currently being considered as elements of CIRL's SWFM smart workflow management system.