MACHINE PLANNING, INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Motivations.

Definitions.

Forms of planning.

Domain Specific Planning

Planning conceptual model.

Restricted planning model.

AGENDA

MOTIVATIONS

Save resources and efforts (practice wise).

Important component of rational behavior (theory wise).

DEFINITION

Planning is the reasoning side of acting. It is an abstract, explicit deliberation process that chooses and organizes actions by anticipating their expected outcomes. This deliberation aims at achieving as best as possible some presented objectives. Automated planning is an area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that studies this deliberation process computationally.

WHEN NOT TO USE PLANNING?

Immediate purpose.

Perform well trained behaviors.

Actions can be easily adapted while acting.

REACTIVE AGENT VS. DELIBERATIVE AGENT

VS

FORMS OF PLANNING

Path and Motion Planning.

Perception Planning: What info is needed? Where to look at it? Which sensors are suitable? How to use.

Navigation Planning: Reach a goal or explore an area

FORMS OF PLANNING

Manipulation Planning: Is concerned with handling objects, e.g., to build

assemblies.

Communication Planning: When and how to query needed information? Which feedback should be provided?

DOMAIN SPECIFIC APPROACHES

Disadvantages of domain specific approaches: Requires understanding of general planning

forms. Reinvents the wheel. Not suitable for designing autonomous intelligent

machine.

Project Planning.

Scheduling and Resource Allocation.

Plan Synthesis.

PLANNING CONCEPTUAL MODELA conceptual model is a simple theoretical device for describing the main elements of a problem.

Plan supervision, plan revision, and replanning mechanisms.

Simple Model Dynamic Model

WHAT’S A PLAN?A plan is a structure that gives the appropriate actions that leads you to the objective.

The objective can be specified in several different ways:

* Specifying goal state or set of goal states.

* More generally, the objective is to satisfy some condition over the sequence of states followed by the system.

* Optimize states utility function.

* Specify tasks.

RESTRICTED CONCEPTUAL PLAN MODEL

1. Finite system.

2. Fully observable.

3. Deterministic.

4. Static.

5. Restricted goals.

6. Sequential plan.

7. Implicit time.

8. Offline planning.

Conformant planning deals with nondeterministic and partially observable systems.