T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1-65, 1997.  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....provide Irr with a number of configurable options to allow the user to select filters, appropriate for the domain, which eliminate irrelevant facts and objects from the domain prior to instantiation of actions. Fully automatic pre planning analyses have also been explored. Porteous and McCluskey [16] have used automatic pre planning analysis of domains encoded in their object centred language, 13 OCL, to identify goal orderings and macro operator sequences. Fink [5] observes that specialised solution techniques are more powerful than general ones, and shows that selection of appropriate ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95(1), 1997.

....If type information is supplied tim can exploit it as the foundation of the type structure and will often infer an enriched type structure on this basis. The inferred type structure is based on the identi cation of functional distinctions sim ilar to those exploited by McCluskey and Porteous [ 9 ] in their hand coded type structures. The functional relationships, upon which these distinctions are based, are extracted from a collection of nite state machines, automatically constructed by tim, which indicate the state transitions that can be made by the objects in the domain. Objects which ....

....be obtained from their use. Kautz and Selman [ 6 ] have hand coded invariants and provided them as part of the domain description used by Blackbox. They demonstrate the performance advantages obtained and acknowledge the importance of inferring such invariants automatically. McCluskey and Porteous [ 9 ] have also demonstrated the important role that hand coded state invariants can play in domain compilation for e cient planning. Earlier work by Kelleher and Cohn [ 7 ] and Morris and Feldman [ 10 ] explores the automatic generation of some restricted invariant forms. The consequence of the ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Eciency. Arti cial Intelligence, 95(1), 1997.

.... development of operators, for planning systems to compare favourably in terms of software life cycle costs to other means of automation , Currie and Tate say it is hard work [5] Knoblock a black art [6] and McCluskey talks about the coding up and maintenance of these operators as difficult [7]. Our experience also suggests that operator development is the most difficult part of writing a new domain. Planner operators have a dual aspect on the one hand they embody knowledge about the behavioural aspects of the domain but on the other they have a substantial effect on how the planner ....

....automatically from the domain knowledge, or alternatively, tools to support the user in developing the operators. Examples of the first response include the induction of operators from an entity relationship model [9] and the generation of operators from the definitions of objects and states [7]. An example of the second response is the graphical user interface for the generation of planner domains, including operators, under development at Edinburgh University by Steve Polyak [13] called the Common Process Editor. This interface lets the user draw a diagram of actions and links ....

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T. L. McCluskey, and J.M. Porteous "Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency" Artificial Intelligence 95 (1997) 1-65.

....modes. This approach dictates a clean separation between models and heuristics, allows non AI specialists to inspect the model and understand the knowledge embedded in the system. This will widen the applicability of AI techniques to real world applications. The Object Centred Language (OCL) [7] and its associated development method forms a rigorous approach to capture the functional requirements of classical planning domains. Using OCL, one builds a model of the planning world, including valid world states and operator schema modelling possible actions (Figure 1) The operators ....

.... to check the domain validity, macros and goal orders generating tools to speed up planning, random tasks generating tools for planning tools testing, and a wide ranges of planning tools including Strips style goal direct planning, macro partial order planning and most recently graph plan planning [11, 6, 5, 7]. HTN planning representations for actions and states of the world are similar to STRIPSstyle planning. That is, each state of the world is represented by the set of atoms true in that state. The difference is its task can be decomposed until the task is a primitive task. A task network is a ....

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T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

.... a hierarchical representation: for instance with inheritance between sorts (the relationship kind of) and or aggregation between sorts (the relationship part of) An equivalent representation is that of sorts in a sorted first order logic, as applied in the planning representation language OCL [5], also organised in hierarchies according to the same constraints, allowing the conceptual model to be translated into OCL. Another advantage is that each frame embodies both structure and behaviour in a single generic entity. Ontology is defined [6] as the rigorous specification of a set of ....

T.L. McCluskey and Porteous J. M. Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency, Artificial Intelligence, pp.1-65. 1997.

.... Koehler 1997) provide ipp with a number of con gurable options to allow the user to select lters (RIFO) which eliminate irrelevant facts and objects from the domain prior to instantiation of actions. Fully automatic pre planning analyses have also been explored. Porteous and McCluskey (McCluskey Porteous 1997) have used automatic pre planning analysis of domains encoded in their object centred language, OCL, to identify goal orderings and macro operator sequences. Gerevini and Schubert (Gerevini Schubert 1996) Scholz (Scholz 1999) Kelleher and Cohn (Kelleher Cohn 1992) and Fox and Long (Fox ....

McCluskey, T. L., and Porteous, J. 1997. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Eciency. Articial Intelligence 95(1).

....engineering methods to construct domain models for planning systems. These methods bring three main benefits to the field as they allow for the validation of planning domain models against the real world, the recognition of useful structural domain properties to improve planning efficiency (e.g. [1]) and the design of customised planners for specific domain classes (e.g. 2] The use of structural properties to speed up planning algorithms is not new in the literature; good examples are [3] 4] 5] 6] to mention but a few. However, neither of these approaches has proposed a generic ....

....approaches has proposed a generic framework to analyse domain properties independently of the used planning algorithms. Moreover, few approaches have addressed the problem of developing complete methodologies to construct domain models specially suited for planners. Recent works in the literature [1] [2] 7] have demonstrated the usefulness of these methods for improving current planner systems. The lack of a methodology for domain model construction is especially critical in the case of large multi agent domains (e.g. Urban Traffic Control [8] 9] Construction [10] Distributed Software ....

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T.L. McCluskey and J.M. Porteous "Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency" Artif. Intell., Vol. 95(1), pp 1-65, 1997.

.... de Inform atica Campus Penyeta Roja, Universitat Jaume I 12071 Castell on de la Plana (Spain) e mail: berlanga inf.uji.es 1 Introduction Recent research in planning has tackled the inherent complexity of propositional planning by defining new encodings for both domain description models [11] and plan representation [3] The former trend is mainly intended to change the point of view of knowledge engineers from propositions to objects. Conversely, the latter trend is aimed at obtaining more sophisticated forms of plan representations for classical domain models in order to speed up ....

....plan encoding for object centred domain models. This approach constitutes a first step to bring together the research efforts carried out in the two trends mentioned above. In this paper, structured domain (SD) models are defined as a specialization of the Loosely Sort Abstracted (LSA) models [11], which regard some of the features of object oriented data models. However, the here proposed domain description language has been specially designed to provide a better support for object oriented domain models as those used in generic knowledge based systems [6] 12] Regarding the operational ....

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T.L.McCluskey and J.M.Porteous "Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency" Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 95(1), pp 1-65, 1997.

....and complexity of these applications. As a consequence, several ad hoc algorithms have been developed for them (e.g. 8] 5] On the other hand, recent research in planning has tackled the inherent complexity of propositional planning by defining new encodings for both domain description models [11] and plan representation [4] The former trend is mainly intended to change the point of view of knowledge engineers from propositions to objects. Conversely, the latter trend is aimed at obtaining more sophisticated forms of plan representations for classical domain models, and in this way to ....

....is intended to generate and validate parallel plans for structured domain models. In this paper, structured domain (SD) models are defined as a specialisation of the so called Loosely Sort Abstracted This work has been partially funded by the Spanish C.I.C.Y.T. project TEL97 1119. LSA) models [11], which regard some of the features of object oriented data models. However, the here proposed domain description language has been specially designed to provide a better support for object oriented domain models as those used in generic knowledge based systems like [6] 12] Regarding the ....

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T.L.McCluskey and J.M.Porteous "Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency" Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 95(1), pp 1-65, 1997.

....the planner can exploit to avoid the need to construct those solution structures from primitive components. ALPINE [Kno94] exploits a similarly extended language which includes domain axioms to allow the inference of abstraction hierarchies to improve planner performance. McCluskey and Porteous [McC97] have considered similarly enriched languages expressing object state spaces and shown that this allows relatively simple planning technology to construct large plans efficiently. SATPLAN [Kau96] uses a different approach to domain encoding, in which the encoding is built as a propositional ....

....in this paper allows a hierarchical type structure to be constructed automatically for the domain objects and the variables in operator schemas. It also automatically constructs the object states for domain objects which are used by McCluskey and Porteous in their work on domain compilation [McC97]. Type inference in the form described here is unusual since no base types are provided or assumed, in contrast to type inference and type checking for programs. Instead, STAN constructs a collection of base types for the objects in the domain from the operator descriptions and initial state. The ....

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L. McCluskey and J. Porteous, Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency, Artificial Intelligence 95(1), pp.1 - 65, 1997.

....efficiency and algorithmic clarity. 1 Introduction This document describes work that is part of a continuing effort to evaluate the impact of modelling planning domains in an object centred way, using a family of fairly simple planning oriented domain modelling languages known as OCL [11]. The benefit is seen as twofold: a) to improve the planning knowledge acquisition and validation process (b) to improve and clarify the plan generation process in planning systems. With regard to (b) it is our belief that certain obstacles and problems that researchers into planning algorithms ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1-65, 1997.

....to an earlier step. There are opportunities to use consistency and cross checking tools both during and after the process. Note that in this section we introduce an example that uses the basic constructs of OCL h . The more advanced features are dealt with in section 4. For guidelines, see also [4, 3, 2] 3.1 Natural Language Description Write down a simple description of the world you want to model. The description should outline the main features of the domain as well as typical problems and ways of solving them. 8 For example, a description of a blocks world (all examples are in blocks ....

....task generator and the goal order generator. 3.6 Operator Specification An operator is defined via its object transitions, i.e. by specifying how typical objects change as a result of operator execution. One can construct state transition diagrams for each primitive sort as shown in references [4, 3], in the usual stlye of object oriented design. Here arcs of the diagram would be operators, and nodes substate classes. For example, in a robot world with more than one robot let us represent the action push a box to a door : ffl Prevail Condition: 11 There must be a robot T in room Room1, ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65,

....generation efficiency and algorithmic clarity. 1 Introduction This document describes work that is part of a continuing effort to evaluate the impact of modelling planning domains in an object centred way, using a family of fairly simple planningoriented domain modelling languages known as OCL [11]. The benefit is seen as twofold: a) to improve the planning knowledge acquisition and validation process (b) to improve and clarify the plan generation process in planning systems. With regard to (b) it is our belief that certain obstacles and problems that researchers into planning algorithms ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

....space to develop the strategy for adequately capturing the domain. Though consistency is not always immediately enforced it should always be possible to identify the outstanding problems. The process of domain model development on which this is based is detailed in the literature, see references [11, 7] for more details. The domain model s ontology is described in reference [9] Here we sketch the main steps of the knowledge acquisition process, showing how the supporting tool embodies this process. We outline two important steps of the knowledge acquisition process acquiring domain structure ....

....analysis can also yield graphs of the transitions of individual sorts as mediated by the defined operators to give a graphic view of dependencies and ordering between operators and states. We are in the process of experimenting with such tools from previous work of members of the Planform project [11] In addition to static analysis of the specification the domain modeller can dynamically check a domain against a set of problems either by using the manual stepper or by running a selected planning algorithm against defined test problem cases. With a stepper, the engineer chooses actions to ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

....can be informed is by providing hints concerning the order in which planning goals should be addressed. This can make a significant difference to search efficiency by helping to focus the planner on a progressive path towards a solution. Work in this area includes that of GAM [9,10] and PRECEDE [12]. Koehler and Hoffmann [10] introduce the notion of reasonable orders where a pair of goals A and B can be ordered so that B is achieved before A if it isn t possible to reach a state in which A and B are both true, from a state in which just A is true, without having to temporarily destroy A. In ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95, 1997.

....can be informed is by providing hints concerning the order in which planning goals should be addressed. This can make a significant difference to search efficiency by helping to focus the planner on a progressive path towards a solution. Work in this area includes that of GAM [9,10] and PRECEDE [12]. Koehler and Hoffmann [10] introduce the notion of reasonable orders where a pair of goals A and B can be ordered so that B is achieved before A if it isn t possible to reach a state in which A and B are both true, from a state in which just A is true, without having to temporarily destroy A. In ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95, 1997.

....destroy A. In such a situation it is reasonable to achieve B before A to avoid unnecessary effort. These orders can be identified through analysis of the planning problem, composed of a domain and problem description, in a pre processing phase prior to planning. Work in this area includes PRECEDE [5] and GAM [4] PRECEDE and GAM used different approaches but produce similar orders. For example, in the blocks world shown in figure 1 where the initial state is on the left and the goal state is shown on the right (the goal is partially specified since the exact location of blocks A, B, J and C ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95, 1997.

....reasonable to achieve B before A to avoid unnecessary effort. These orders can be identified through analysis of the planning problem, composed of a domain and problem description, in a pre processing phase prior to planning. Work in this area includes that of McCluskey and Porteous with PRECEDE [7] and the more recent work of Koehler and Hoffman with GAM [6] PRECEDE performed an analysis directly on the operators for a planning domain by firstly, identifying the set of necessary operators to achieve This work was completed while Laura was visiting the University of Durham, sponsored by ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and compiling planning domain models to promote validity and efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95, 1997.

....plan graph, extended to deal with conditional effects. 1 Introduction This paper describes work that is part of a continuing effort to evaluate the impact of modelling planning domains in an object centred way, using a family of planning oriented domain modelling languages known as OCL [10]. The benefit is seen as twofold: a) to improve the planning knowledge acquisition and validation process (b) to improve and clarify the plan generation process in planning systems. With regard to (b) it is our belief that certain obstacles and problems that researchers into planning algorithms ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous, `Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency', Artificial Intelligence, 95, 1--65, (1997).

.... formal methods is the construction and validation of requirements represented as formal systems (using rich languages such as RML [GMB94] In AI, such rigorous approaches to requirements capture have been taken in for example knowledge based systems [vHF95, MP96, ABvH94] and automated planning [MP97] Within Software Engineering the use of mathematically precise specifications and methods are still controversial, although it is generally agreed that in a range of applications where the building of a domain theory is feasible, many advantages for the system development accrue. Establishing ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

....would be associated with a 1 2 domain building methodology, be structured to allow the expeditious capture of knowledge, and have the benefit of a tools environment for knowledge engineering. OCL h is a family of fairly simple planning oriented domain modelling languages stemming from reference [11]. The benefit in using OCL h is seen as twofold: to improve the planning knowledge acquisition and validation process; and to improve and clarify the plan generation process in planning systems. A range of planners have been implemented for use with OCL h [17, 9, 7] and the language is being used ....

....aimed to keep the generality of classical planning but to incorporate a model building method and be structured to help the validation and operationalisation of domain models. For more information on the OCL h family and its development method, examples and tools, consult references [14, 8, 11]. An OCL h world is populated with dynamic static objects grouped into sorts 2 . Each dynamic object exists in one of a well defined set of states (called substates ) where these substates are characterised by predicates. On this view the application of an operator will result in some of the ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

....and supportive to knowledge engineers. OCL h is a language, with a supporting method, which has been designed for encoding domains for both classical precondition planners and HTN planners. The rationale for an object centred approach to encoding planning domains was proposed in reference [12]. A full method for the model building process was described, including the establishment of various model properties, supported by a set of tools to support the engineering process. While this defined the base language, OCL was later extended to OCL h to include an extension for HTN models. Along ....

....of the OCL h language (i.e. sort hierarchies and invariants) from literalbased precondition and effects operators. Gerevini and Schubert have shown the potential of type analysis in planning [7] and McCluskey and Porteous showed the potential of combined domain independent heuristic extracion [12]. Tools based on this work help the knowledge engineer build a model by (a) cross checking stated assumptions and properties of the model (b) making explicit implicit knowledge that is particularly helpful to a planner. Biundo and Stephan have also worked on systematic modelling of planning ....

T. L. McCluskey and J. M. Porteous. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence, 95:1--65, 1997.

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IOS Press. 233--244 . McCluskey, T. L., and Porteous, J. M. 1997. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence 95:1--65.

....OCL benefits plan generation efficiency and algorithmic clarity. Introduction This paper describes work that is part of a continuing effort to evaluate the impact of modelling planning domains in an object centred way, using a family of planning oriented domain modelling languages known as OCL (McCluskey Porteous 1997). The benefit is seen as twofold: a) to improve the planning knowledge acquisition and validation process (b) to improve and clarify the plan generation process in planning systems. With regard to (b) it is our belief that certain obstacles and problems that researchers into planning algorithms ....

McCluskey, T. L., and Porteous, J. M. 1997. Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency. Artificial Intelligence 95:1--65.

.... as formal systems (using rich languages such as RML (Greenspan et al. 1994) In AI, such rigorous approaches to requirements capture have been taken in for example knowledge based systems (van Harmelen and Fensel, 1995; Meseguer and Preece, 1996; Aben et al. 1994) and automated planning (McCluskey and Porteous, 1997). Within Software Engineering the use of mathematically precise specifications and methods are still controversial, although it is generally agreed that in a range of applications where the building of a domain theory is feasible, many advantages for the system development accrue. Establishing the ....

....Air Traffic Services (NATS) and hence an additional objective was to identify and document errors found in, and refinements carried out on, the CPS . Progress towards these objectives and the resultant developments in the original project plan were documented during the project (McCluskey, 1996; McCluskey, 1997b) and the updates of the CPS delivered to NATS. Conference papers presented include references (McCluskey and M.West, 1998a; McCluskey and M.West, 1998b) 1.3. Contribution The most important contribution of this paper is a method, and algorithms, for applying theory refinement to a large ....

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McCluskey, T. L. and J. M. Porteous: 1997, `Engineering and Compiling Planning Domain Models to Promote Validity and Efficiency'. Artificial Intelligence 95, 1--65.

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