Practical Planning

Practical Planning

by David E. Wilkins
Released June 2014
Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 9780080514475

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Book description

Planning, or reasoning about actions, is a fundamental element of intelligent behavior--and one that artificial intelligence has found very difficult to implement. The most well-understood approach to building planning systems has been under refinement since the late 1960s and has now reached a level of maturity where there are good prospects for building working planners.

Practical Planning is an in-depth examination of this classical planning paradigm through an intensive case study of SIPE, a significantly implemented planning system. The author, the developer of SIPE, defines the planning problem in general, explains why reasoning about actions is so complex, and describes all parts of the SIPE system and the algorithms needed to achieve efficiency. Details are discussed in the context of problems and important issues in building a practical planner; discussions of how other systems address these issues are also included.

Assuming only a basic background in AI, Practical Planning will be of great interest to professionals interested in incorporating planning capabilities into AI systems.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Practical Planning: Extending the Classical AI Planning Paradigm
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. List of Figures
  7. List of Tables
  8. CHAPTER 1. Reasoning about Actions and Planning
    1. 1.1 Philosophical and Practical Importance
    2. 1.2 The Classical AI Planning Problem
    3. 1.3 Reactive Planning
    4. 1.4 The Essence of Planning
    5. 1.5 Capabilities of a Planning System
    6. 1.6 How Hard is Planning?
    7. 1.7 Classical AI Planning Systems
    8. 1.8 SIPE
  9. CHAPTER 2. Basic Assumptions and Limitations
    1. 2.1 Important Features
    2. 2.2 Limitations
  10. CHAPTER 3. SIPE and Its Representations
    1. 3.1 Representation of Domain Objects and Relationships
    2. 3.2 Operator Description Language
    3. 3.3 Plan Rationale
    4. 3.4 Plans (1/2)
    5. 3.4 Plans (2/2)
  11. CHAPTER 4. Hierarchical Planning at Differing Abstraction Levels
    1. 4.1 The Many Guises of Hierarchical Planning
    2. 4.2 A Problem with Current Planners
    3. 4.3 Solutions (1/2)
    4. 4.3 Solutions (2/2)
  12. CHAPTER 5. Constraints
    1. 5.1 SIPE's Constraint Language
    2. 5.2 Use of Constraints
    3. 5.3 Unification
  13. CHAPTER 6. The Truth Criterion
    1. 6.1 The Formula Truth Criterion
    2. 6.2 The PTC for Ground, Linear Plans
    3. 6.3 Introducing Variables
    4. 6.4 Introducing Existential Quantifiers
    5. 6.5 Introducing Universal Quantifiers
    6. 6.6 Introducing Nonlinearity
    7. 6.7 Summary
  14. CHAPTER 7. Deductive Causal Theories
    1. 7.1 A Motivating Example
    2. 7.2 Domain Rules
    3. 7.3 Problems with Domain Rules
    4. 7.4 Heuristic Adequacy and Expressive Power
  15. CHAPTER 8. Plan Critics
    1. 8.1 Solving the Constraint Network
    2. 8.2 Parallel Interactions
    3. 8.3 Goal Phantomization
    4. 8.4 Solving Harmful Interactions
    5. 8.5 Adding Ordering Constraints
    6. 8.6 Examples (1/2)
    7. 8.6 Examples (2/2)
  16. CHAPTER 9. Resources: Reusable, Consumable, Temporal
    1. 9.1 Reusable Resources
    2. 9.2 Representation of Numerical Quantities
    3. 9.3 Consumable Resources (1/2)
    4. 9.3 Consumable Resources (2/2)
    5. 9.4 Temporal Reasoning
    6. 9.5 Manipulating Numerical Quantities
    7. 9.6 Summary
  17. CHAPTER 10. Search
    1. 10.1 Automatic Search
    2. 10.2 Intermingling Planning and Execution
    3. 10.3 Interactive Control
    4. 10.4 Domain-Dependent Search Control
    5. 10.5 Other Search Strategies
  18. CHAPTER 11. Replanning During Execution
    1. 11.1 Overview of SIPE's Execution-Monitoring System
    2. 11.2 Unknowns
    3. 11.3 Interpreting the Input
    4. 11.4 The Problem Recognizer
    5. 11.5 Replanning Actions (1/2)
    6. 11.5 Replanning Actions (2/2)
    7. 11.6 The General Replanner
    8. 11.7 Examples
    9. 11.8 Searching the Space of Modified Plans
    10. 11.9 Summary
  19. CHAPTER 12. Planning and Reactivity
    1. 12.1 Level of the Interface
    2. 12.2 Who Is in Control?
  20. CHAPTER 13. Achieving Heuristic Adequacy
    1. 13.1 Summary of Heuristics
    2. 13.2 Subsumption of Pred Constraints
    3. 13.3 Encoding Domains in SIPE
  21. CHAPTER 14. Comparison with Other Systems
    1. 14.1 Nonclassical Planning Systems
    2. 14.2 Previous Classical Planners
    3. 14.3 Constraints
    4. 14.4 Critics
    5. 14.5 Replanning
    6. 14.6 Heuristic Adequacy
  22. Bibliography
  23. Index (1/2)
  24. Index (2/2)

Product information

  • Title: Practical Planning
  • Author(s): David E. Wilkins
  • Release date: June 2014
  • Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
  • ISBN: 9780080514475