TY - GEN
T1 - Qualitative numeric planning
AU - Srivastava, Siddharth
AU - Zilberstein, Shlomo
AU - Immerman, Neil
AU - Geffner, Hector
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - We consider a new class of planning problems involving a set of non-negative real variables, and a set of non-deterministic actions that increase or decrease the values of these variables by some arbitrary amount. The formulas specifying the initial state, goal state, or action preconditions can only assert whether certain variables are equal to zero or not. Assuming that the state of the variables is fully observable, we obtain two results. First, the solution to the problem can be expressed as a policy mapping qualitative states into actions, where a qualitative state includes a Boolean variable for each original variable, indicating whether its value is zero or not. Second, testing whether any such policy, that may express nested loops of actions, is a solution to the problem, can be determined in time that is polynomial in the qualitative state space, which is much smaller than the original infinite state space. We also report experimental results using a simple generate-and-test planner to illustrate these findings.
AB - We consider a new class of planning problems involving a set of non-negative real variables, and a set of non-deterministic actions that increase or decrease the values of these variables by some arbitrary amount. The formulas specifying the initial state, goal state, or action preconditions can only assert whether certain variables are equal to zero or not. Assuming that the state of the variables is fully observable, we obtain two results. First, the solution to the problem can be expressed as a policy mapping qualitative states into actions, where a qualitative state includes a Boolean variable for each original variable, indicating whether its value is zero or not. Second, testing whether any such policy, that may express nested loops of actions, is a solution to the problem, can be determined in time that is polynomial in the qualitative state space, which is much smaller than the original infinite state space. We also report experimental results using a simple generate-and-test planner to illustrate these findings.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80055045391&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80055045391&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:80055045391
SN - 9781577355090
T3 - Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
SP - 1010
EP - 1016
BT - AAAI-11 / IAAI-11 - Proceedings of the 25th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 23rd Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference
T2 - 25th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 23rd Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, AAAI-11 / IAAI-11
Y2 - 7 August 2011 through 11 August 2011
ER -