UNIT-5

CLASSICAL PLANNING
 CLASSICAL PLANNING
• The problem-solving agent can find sequences of actions that result in a
goal state. But it deals with atomic representations of states and thus needs
good domain-specific heuristics to perform well.
• The hybrid propositional logical agent can find plans without domain-
specific heuristics because it uses domain-independent heuristics based on
the logical structure of the problem. But it relies on ground (variable-free)
propositional inference, which means that it may be swamped when there
are many actions and states. For example, in the wumpus world, the
simple action of moving a step forward had to be repeated for all four
agent orientations, T time steps, and n^2 current locations.
• Planning researchers have settled on a factored representation— one in
which a state of the world is represented by a collection of variables.
• PDDL, the Planning Domain Definition Language, that allows us to
express all 4T n^2 PDDL actions with one action schema.
 Planning Domain Definition Language
• Each state is represented as a conjunction of fluents that are ground,
functionless atoms. For example, Poor ∧ Unknown might represent the
state of a hapless agent, and a state in a package delivery problem might be
At(Truck 1, Melbourne) ∧ At(Truck 2, Sydney).
• Database semantics is used: the closed-world assumption means that any
fluents that are not mentioned are false, and the unique names assumption
means that Truck 1 and Truck 2 are distinct.
• The following fluents are not allowed in a state: At(x, y) (because it is non-
ground), ¬Poor (because it is a negation), and At(Father (Fred), Sydney)
(because it uses a function symbol).
• The representation of states is carefully designed so that a state can be
treated either as a conjunction of fluents, which can be manipulated by
logical inference, or as a set of fluents, which can be manipulated with set
operations.
 Planning Domain Definition Language
• Actions are described by a set of action schemas that implicitly define the
ACTIONS(s) and RESULT(s, a) functions needed to do a problem-solving
search.
• Classical planning concentrates on problems where most actions leave most
things unchanged. Think of a world consisting of a bunch of objects on a
flat surface. The action of nudging an object causes that object to change its
location by a vector ∆.
• PDDL does that by specifying the result of an action in terms of what
changes; everything that stays the same is left unmentioned.
• A set of ground (variable-free) actions can be represented by a single action
schema. The schema is a lifted representation—it lifts the level of
reasoning from propositional logic to a restricted subset of first-order logic.
• For example, here is an action schema for flying a plane from one location
to another:
 Planning Domain Definition Language
• The schema consists of the action name, a list of all the variables used in
the schema, a precondition and an effect.

• The precondition defines the states in which the action can be executed,
and the effect defines the result of executing the action. An action a can be
executed in state s if s entails the precondition of a. Entailment can also be
expressed with the set semantics: s |= q iff every positive literal in q is in
s and every negated literal in q is not.
Planning Domain Definition Language
 Example: Air cargo transport
• Air cargo transport problem involving loading and unloading cargo and
flying it from place to place. The problem can be defined with three
actions: Load, Unload, and Fly.
• The actions affect two predicates: In(c, p) means that cargo c is inside plane
p, and At(x, a) means that object x (either plane or cargo) is at airport .
• When a plane flies from one airport to another, all the cargo inside the
plane goes with it. In first-order logic it would be easy to quantify over all
objects that are inside the plane.
• The approach we use is to say that a piece of cargo ceases to be At
anywhere when it is In a plane; the cargo only becomes At the new airport
when it is unloaded. So At really means “available for use at a given
location.” The following plan is a solution to the problem:
 Example: The spare tire problem
• Consider the problem of changing a flat tire
• The goal is to have a good spare tire properly mounted onto the car’s axle,
where the initial state has a flat tire on the axle and a good spare tire in the
trunk.
• There are just four actions: removing the spare from the trunk, removing
the flat tire from the axle, putting the spare on the axle, and leaving the car
unattended overnight .
• We assume that the car is parked in a particularly bad neighborhood, so that
the effect of leaving it overnight is that the tires disappear.
• A solution to the problem is [Remove(Flat, Axle), Remove(Spare,
Trunk ), PutOn(Spare, Axle)].
Example: The spare tire problem
 Example: The blocks world
• One of the most famous planning domains is known as the blocks world. This
domain consists of a set of cube-shaped blocks sitting on a table.
• The blocks can be stacked, but only one block can fit directly on top of another. A
robot arm can pick up a block and move it to another position, either on the table or
on top of another block. The arm can pick up only one block at a time, so it
cannot pick up a block that has another one on it.
• The goal will always be to build one or more stacks of blocks, specified in terms of
what blocks are on top of what other blocks. For example, a goal might be to get
block A on B and block B on C.
 For example, a goal might be to get block A on B and
block B on C
• We use On(b, x) to indicate that block b is on x, where x is either another block or
the table. The action for moving block b from the top of x to the top of y will be
Move(b, x, y).
• Now, one of the preconditions on moving b is that no other block be on it. In first-
order logic, this would be ¬∃ x On(x, b) or, alternatively, ∀ x ¬On(x, b).
• The action Move moves a block b from x to y if both b and y are clear. After the
move is made, b is still clear but y is not. A first attempt at the Move schema is
• Action(Move(b, x, y),
• PRECOND: On(b, x) ∧ Clear (b) ∧ Clear (y),
• EFFECT: On(b, y) ∧ Clear (x) ∧ ¬On(b, x) ∧ ¬Clear (y)) .
Example: The blocks world
 The complexity of classical planning
• What is PlanSAT and Bounded PlanSAT?
• PlanSAT:
– A decision problem that asks, "Is there any plan that
solves the problem?"
– It doesn’t care about how long the plan is, just whether a
plan exists.
• Bounded PlanSAT:
– A decision problem that asks, "Is there a plan of length
kor less that solves the problem?"
– Used when we are interested in finding the shortest
(optimal) plan.
 The complexity of classical planning
• Are These Problems Decidable?
• Yes, they are decidable for classical planning because the number
of states is finite.
• If we add function symbols (allowing infinite states):
– PlanSAT becomes semidecidable:
• The algorithm will find a solution if one exists.
• But if no solution exists, the algorithm might run forever.
– Bounded PlanSAT remains decidable because we restrict the
search to a finite length (kkk).