Representing a shared mental model is a challenging problem. It can be viewed as a kind of belief reasoning, which is generally intractable [Halpern and Moses, 1992].
Moreover, the content of the shared mental model is quite broad, ranging from shared domain knowledge to a common relevant picture of the situation. We tackle this problem by focusing on two specific uses of the shared mental model: making teamwork efficient through anticipating the actions and expectations of others (e.g. by
knowing others’ roles, capabilities, and commitments), and by information exchange (knowing who to ask for information, or providing information proactively just when it is needed by someone else to accomplish their task). To avoid issues of computational complexity with belief reasoning (e.g. higher-order modal logics), we use Petri Nets as an approximate finite and computable model of mental states.